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Abstract

We study a modified Ramsey spectroscopy technique employing slowly decaying states for quantum metrology applications using dense ensembles. While closely positioned atoms exhibit super-radiant collective decay and dipole-dipole induced frequency shifts, recent results [L. Ostermann, H. Ritsch, and C. Genes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 123601 (2013)] suggest the possibility to suppress such detrimental effects and achieve an even better scaling of the frequency sensitivity with interrogation time than for noninteracting particles. Here we present an in-depth analysis of this "protected subspace Ramsey technique" using improved analytical modeling and numerical simulations including larger three-dimensional (3D) samples. Surprisingly we find that using subradiant states of N particles to encode the atomic coherence yields a scaling of the optimal sensitivity better than 1/root N . Applied to ultracold atoms in 3D optical lattices we predict a precision beyond the single atom linewidth.