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We present criteria to detect the depth of entanglement in macroscopic ensembles of spin- j particles using the variance and second moments of the collective spin components. The class of states detected goes beyond traditional spin-squeezed states by including Dicke states and other unpolarized states. The criteria derived are easy to evaluate numerically even for systems of very many particles and outperform past approaches, especially in practical situations where noise is present. We also derive analytic lower bounds based on the linearization of our criteria, which make it possible to define spin-squeezing parameters for Dicke states. In addition, we obtain spin squeezing parameters also from the condition derived in (Sørensen and Mølmer 2001 Phys. Rev. Lett. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.86.4431 86 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.86.4431 ). We also extend our results to systems with fluctuating number of particles.

We present a method to verify the metrological usefulness of noisy Dicke states of a particle ensemble with only a few collective measurements, without the need for a direct measurement of the sensitivity. Our method determines the usefulness of the state for the usual protocol for estimating the angle of rotation with Dicke states, which is based on the measurement of the second moment of a total spin component. It can also be used to detect entangled states that are useful for quantum metrology. We apply our method to recent experimental results.