Beyond sensitivity: mechanism-resolved error budgets for designing quantum sensors

Quantum sensors are specified by a headline sensitivity, yet applications also demand accuracy and reliability. The dominant limiter of one metric is often known, but no method resolves how interacting mechanisms combine into a signed, per-mechanism budget for each metric. We introduce a framework that computes a sensor's sensitivity, accuracy, and robustness from one open-system simulation and attributes each to its limiting mechanism. For a nitrogen-vacancy diamond ensemble the attribution inverts across metrics: dephasing limits sensitivity, the thermal ground-state shift limits accuracy, and optical leakage limits robustness. At identical sensitivity the recovered-field bias spans 8 to 1500\,nT, so tuning to sensitivity alone can miss the accuracy target by two orders of magnitude. The same modeling transfers to a cesium optically pumped magnetometer recording a human magnetocardiogram. As a digital twin, it predicts the gain from addressing each limiter, so sensors can be designed to the required metrics.

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