Spin-squeezing-induced enhancement of the sensitivity of an atomic clock using coherent population trapping

Abstract

The coherent population trapping (CPT) effect is used for making compact atomic clocks. There are two types of CPT clocks: the one in which the Raman beams are applied continuously and the one in which two CPT pulses separated by a dark period are applied (Ramsey scheme). It is obvious that the technique of spin squeezing can only be applied to the Ramsey CPT clock to enhance the sensitivity. However, it is not apparent how to adapt to the CPT clock the protocols for the microwave clock using one-axis-twist squeezing (OATS), since the Ramsey CPT clock is not trivially equivalent to the Ramsey microwave clock. In this paper, we show explicitly how to adapt two protocols using OATS, namely, the Schr\"odinger cat state protocol (SCSP) and the generalization thereof, and the echo squeezing protocol (ESP), to the CPT clock. The ESP magnifies the phase shift by a factor of $\sqrt{N/e}$, while the SCSP magnifies the phase shift by a factor of $N/2$, making it able to achieve a higher sensitivity in the presence of excess noise.