Robust spin squeezing via photon-mediated interactions on an optical clock transition

Cavity-QED is a promising avenue for the deterministic generation of entangled and spin-squeezed states for quantum metrology. One archetypal scheme generates squeezing via collective one-axis twisting interactions. However, we show that in implementations using optical transitions in long-lived atoms the achievable squeezing is fundamentally limited by collectively enhanced emission into the cavity mode which is generated in parallel with the cavity-mediated spin-spin interactions. We propose an alternative scheme which generates a squeezed state that is protected from collective emission, and investigate its sensitivity to realistic sources of experimental noise and imperfections.