Dick noise, arising from aliasing of local-oscillator (LO) fluctuations through dead time, limits the stability of leading optical lattice clocks. We propose a multiple-excitation protocol that implements coherence buffering: Most atoms are shelved in protected Zeeman manifolds, and controlled deexcitation releases fresh subensembles for sequential clock-transition interrogations within a single preparation. This timelike multiplexing raises the effective duty cycle without lengthening the interrogation beyond the coherence limit or shortening the fixed dead time. Sensitivity-function analysis shows a train of lobes in time and suppression of low-order Fourier components $g^{\prime }\left(m\right)$ that couple most strongly to LO flicker ($1/f$) noise. Incorporating the quantum projection noise–limited atom number, coherence limited $T_i$, and reservoir loss, we find a nonmonotonic optimum in the achievable interrogation count versus LO stability; for representative flicker levels ${\sigma }_0\in [4\times {10}^{-16},8\times {10}^{-15}]$, the Dick-noise contribution is reduced by approximately $2.4–5.65\mathrm{dB}$. Time-domain Monte Carlo simulations using synthesized $1/f$ noise agree with the analytical predictions, and a noise decomposition based on experimentally reported power-law LO-noise parameters shows a nearly constant flicker fraction (approximately equal to $0.89$) across interrogation numbers. More broadly, shelving-deexcitation coherence buffering is a portable “prepare once, interrogate many'' primitive for quantum sensors, simulators, and processors.

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• Atomic, optical & lattice clocks
• Coherent control
• Quantum fluctuations & noise