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We discuss the theory and experimental considerations of a quantum feedback scheme for producing deterministically reproducible spin squeezing. Continuous nondemolition atom number measurement from monitoring a probe field conditionally squeezes the sample. Simultaneous feedback of the measurement results controls the quantum state such that the squeezing becomes unconditional. We find that for very strong cavity coupling and a limited number of atoms, the theoretical squeezing approaches the Heisenberg limit. Strong squeezing will still be produced at weaker coupling and even in free space (thus presenting a simple experimental test for quantum feedback). The measurement and feedback can be stopped at any time, thereby freezing the sample with a desired amount of squeezing.
We propose a technique to control the macroscopic collective nuclear spin of a Helium-3 vapor in the quantum regime using light. The scheme relies on metastability exchange collisions to mediate interactions between optically accessible metastable states and the ground-state nuclear spin, giving rise to an effective nuclear spin-light quantum nondemolition interaction of the Faraday form. Our technique enables measurement-based quantum control of nuclear spins, such as the preparation of spin-squeezed states. This, combined with the day-long coherence time of nuclear spin states in Helium-3, opens the possibility for a number of applications in quantum technology.
We demonstrate unconditional quantum-noise suppression in a collective spin system via feedback control based on quantum non-demolition measurement (QNDM). We perform shot-noise limited collective spin measurements on an ensemble of $3.7times 10^5$ laser-cooled 171Yb atoms in their spin-1/2 ground states. Correlation between two sequential QNDMs indicates $-0.80^{+0.11}_{-0.12},mathrm{dB}$ quantum noise suppression in a conditional manner. Our feedback control successfully converts the conditional quantum-noise suppression into the unconditional one without significant loss of the noise
We show that continuous quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement of an atomic ensemble is able to improve the precision of frequency estimation even in the presence of independent dephasing acting on each atom. We numerically simulate the dynamics of an ensemble with up to N = 150 atoms initially prepared in a (classical) spin coherent state, and we show that, thanks to the spin squeezing dynamically generated by the measurement, the information obtainable from the continuous photocurrent scales superclassically with respect to the number of atoms N. We provide evidence that such superclassical scaling holds for different values of dephasing and monitoring efficiency. We moreover calculate the extra information obtainable via a final strong measurement on the conditional states generated during the dynamics and show that the corresponding ultimate limit is nearly achieved via a projective measurement of the spin-squeezed collective spin operator. We also briefly discuss the difference between our protocol and standard estimation schemes, where the state preparation time is neglected.
This paper reviews quantum spin squeezing, which characterizes the sensitivity of a state with respect to an SU(2) rotation, and is significant for both entanglement detection and high-precision metrology. We first present various definitions of spin squeezing parameters, explain their origin and properties for typical states, and then discuss spin-squeezed states produced with the Ising and the nonlinear twisting Hamiltonians. Afterwards, we explain correlations and entanglement in spin-squeezed states, as well as the relations between spin squeezing and quantum Fisher information, where the latter plays a central role in quantum metrology. We also review the applications of spin squeezing for detecting quantum chaos and quantum phase transitions, as well as the influence of decoherence on spin-squeezed states. Finally, several experiments are discussed including: producing spin squeezed states via particle collisions in Bose-Einstein condensates, mapping photon squeezing onto atomic ensembles, and quantum non-demolition measurements.
We provide a framework for understanding recent experiments on squeezing of a collective atomic pseudo-spin, induced by a homodyne measurement on off-resonant probe light interrogating the atoms. The detection of light decimates the atomic state distribution and we discuss the conditions under which the resulting reduced quantum fluctuations are metrologically relevant. In particular, we consider a dual probe scheme which benefits from a cancelation of classical common mode noise sources such that quantum fluctuations from light and atoms are the main contributions to the detected signal.