Intermittency and metastable dark states as a resource for continuous sensing

Quanta emitted by an open quantum system carry information about intrinsic parameters, enabling their estimation via continuous monitoring. In practice, however, only a fraction of the emitted quanta is detected, reducing the achievable sensitivity. Here, we consider few-level systems in which coherent couplings and dissipative processes compete, producing metastable dynamics characterized by emission intermittency or by the emergence of a dark state. We show that both phenomena can be beneficial for sensing but their relative performance depends strongly on the achievable detection efficiencies. Intermittent emission, marked by long alternating bright and dark periods, allows to achieve robustness with respect to inefficient detection and dephasing, whereas dark states yield significantly higher sensitivity at unit detection efficiency. Yet the latter are highly susceptible to losses. We quantify the impact of inefficient detection through the classical Fisher information of the emission record and benchmark it against the ultimate sensitivity encoded in the joint system-environment state. Finally, we demonstrate that maximum-likelihood estimators based on the observed emission record can effectively approach this sensitivity. We focus here on trapped-ion systems, however, the results extend to other quantum platforms in which similar emission dynamics can be observed.