Implementation of Cavity Squeezing of a Collective Atomic Spin

We squeeze unconditionally the collective spin of a dilute ensemble of laser-cooled 87Rb atoms using their interaction with a driven optical resonator. The shape and size of the resulting spin uncertainty region are well described by a simple analytical model [M. H. Schleier-Smith, I. D. Leroux, and V. Vuletić, arXiv:0911.3936 [Phys. Rev. A (to be published)]] through 2 orders of magnitude in the effective interaction strength, without free parameters. We deterministically generate states with up to 5.6(6) dB of metrologically relevant spin squeezing on the canonical 87Rb hyperfine clock transition.