Quantum metrology with cold atomic ensembles

¹ ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Mediterranean Technology Park, 08860 Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain
² ICREA – Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
³ Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, JJ Thompson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0HE, UK
⁴ Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, UMR 7162, Bât. Condorcet, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France
⁵ Optos, Carnegie Campus, Dunfermline, KY11 8GR, Scotland, UK

^a e-mail: morgan.mitchell@icfo.es

Abstract

Quantum metrology uses quantum features such as entanglement and squeezing to improve the sensitivity of quantum-limited measurements. Long established as a valuable technique in optical measurements such as gravitational-wave detection, quantum metrology is increasingly being applied to atomic instruments such as matter-wave interferometers, atomic clocks, and atomic magnetometers. Several of these new applications involve dual optical/atomic quantum systems, presenting both new challenges and new opportunities. Here we describe an optical magnetometry system that achieves both shot-noise-limited and projection-noise-limited performance, allowing study of optical magnetometry in a fully-quantum regime [1]. By near-resonant Faraday rotation probing, we demonstrate measurement-based spin squeezing in a magnetically-sensitive atomic ensemble [2-4]. The versatility of this system allows us also to design metrologically-relevant optical nonlinearities, and to perform quantum-noise-limited measurements with interacting photons. As a first interaction-based measurement [5], we implement a non-linear metrology scheme proposed by Boixo et al. with the surprising feature of precision scaling better than the 1/N “Heisenberg limit” [6].