Decay of quantum sensitivity due to three-body loss in Bose-Einstein condensates

In view of the coherent properties of a large number of atoms, Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) have a high potential for sensing applications. Several proposals have been put forward to use collective excitations such as phonons in BECs for quantum-enhanced sensing in quantum metrology. However, the associated highly nonclassical states tend to be very vulnerable to decoherence. In this article, we investigate the effect of decoherence due to the omnipresent process of three-body loss in BECs.We find strong restrictions for a wide range of parameters, and we discuss possibilities to limit these restrictions.