Optimized squeezing for accurate differential sensing under large phase noise

Abstract

Atom interferometers are reaching sensitivities fundamentally constrained by quantum fluctuations. A main challenge is to integrate entanglement into quantum sensing protocols to enhance precision while ensuring robustness against noise and systematics. Here, we theoretically investigate differential phase measurements with two atom interferometers using spin-squeezed states of N atoms, accounting for common-mode phase noise spanning the full 2π range. We estimate the differential signal using model-free ellipse fitting, a robust method requiring no device calibration and resilient to additional noise sources. Our results show that spin-squeezing enables sensitivities below the standard quantum limit (SQL). Specifically, we identify optimal squeezed states that minimize the differential phase uncertainty, scaling as , thus overcoming the SQL by a factor , while eliminating the bias inherent in ellipse fitting methods. We benchmark our protocol against the Cramér–Rao bound and compare it with hybrid methods that incorporate auxiliary classical sensors. Our findings provide a pathway to robust and high-precision atom interferometry, in realistic noisy environments and using readily available states and estimation methods.