Spin squeezing and entanglement for an arbitrary spin

Abstract

A complete set of generalized spin-squeezing inequalities is derived for an ensemble of particles with an arbitrary spin. Our conditions are formulated with the first and second moments of the collective angular momentum coordinates. A method for mapping the spin-squeezing inequalities for spin-12 particles to entanglement conditions for spin-j particles is also presented. We apply our mapping to obtain a generalization of the original spin-squeezing inequality to higher spins. We show that, for large particle numbers, a spin-squeezing parameter for entanglement detection based on one of our inequalities is strictly stronger than the original spin-squeezing parameter defined in Sørensen et al. [Nature (London) 409, 63 (2001)NATUAS0028- 083610.1038/35051038]. We present a coordinate system independent form of our inequalities that contains, besides the correlation and covariance tensors of the collective angular momentum operators, the nematic tensor appearing in the theory of spin nematics. Finally, we discuss how to measure the quantities appearing in our inequalities in experiments. © 2014 American Physical Society.