Spin squeezing via ladder operations on an atomic coherent state
Christopher C. Gerry, Adil Benmoussa · Physical Review A · 2008
We study the generation of spin squeezing by the repeated action of the angular momentum (Dicke) lowering operator on an atomic coherent state prepared for a collection of $N$ two-level atoms or ions. The atoms or ions of the atomic coherent state are not entangled, but the action of the lowering operator (or similarly of the raising operator) generates entanglement among the atoms, and spin squeezing occurs for some ranges of the relevant parameter. Spin squeezing in a collection of two-level atoms or ions is of importance for precision spectroscopy. We discuss methods by which our spin-squeezed states could be generated in the contexts of cavity QED and trapped ions.