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Squeezed spin states have important applications in quantum metrology and sensing. It has been shown by S{\o}rensen and M{\o}lmer [Phys. Rev. A 66, 022314(2002)] that an effective one-axis-twisting interaction can be realized in a cavity setup via a double off-resonance stimulated Raman scattering, resulting in a noise reduction scaling $\propto 1/N^{2/3}$ with $N$ being the atom number. Here, we show that, by making an appropriate change of the initial input spin state, it is possible to produce a one-axis-twisting spin squeezing via a \emph{single} off-resonance stimulated Raman scattering, which thus can greatly simplify the realistic implementation. We also show that the one-axis-twisting interaction can be transformed into a more efficient two-axis-twisting interaction by rotating the collective spin while coupling to the cavity, yielding a Heisenberg limited noise reduction $\propto1/N$. Considering the noise effects due to atomic decoherence and cavity decay, we find that substantial squeezing is still attainable with current laboratory techniques., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures

The ability to efficiently realize storage and readout of optical squeezed states plays a key roll in continuous-variables quantum information processing. Here we study the quantum memory (QM) for squeezed state of propagating light in atoms based on the hybrid photon echo re-phasing (HYPER). The optical quantum state is recorded in two sublevels of the ground state of an atomic ensemble to realize long-lived QM. Taking into account the noise effect due to atomic decay, our estimation indicates that, with currently available technique, high fidelities larger than the classical fidelity threshold 81.5 % are obtainable. Our work provides some practical guidance for realization of efficient and faithful photon-echo-based memory for squeezed light.

The continuous-variable controlled-Z gate is a canonical two-mode gate for universal continuous-variable quantum computation. It is considered as one of the most fundamental continuous-variable quantum gates. Here we present a scheme for realizing continuous-variable controlled-Z gate between two optical beams using an atomic ensemble. The gate is performed by simply sending the two beams propagating in two orthogonal directions twice through a spin-squeezed atomic medium. Its fidelity can run up to one if the input atomic state is infinitely squeezed. Considering the noise effects due to atomic decoherence and light losses, we show that the observed fidelities of the scheme are still quite high within presently available techniques., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Physical Review A