Improving Short-Term Stability in Optical Lattice Clocks by Quantum Nondemolition Measurements

We propose a multimeasurement estimation protocol for Quantum Nondemolition (QND) measurements in a Rabi clock interferometer. The method is well suited for current state-of-the-art optical lattice clocks with QND measurement capabilities. The protocol exploits the correlations between multiple non-destructive measurements of the initially prepared coherent spin state. A suitable Gaussian estimator for the clock laser detuning is presented, and an analytic expression for the sensitivity of the protocol is derived. We use this analytic expression to optimise the protocol using available experimental parameters, achieving an improvement of 7.9dB with respect to the standard quantum limit (SQL) in terms of clock stability. We also discuss the measurement back-action effects of our protocol into the atomic state.