  Ramsey spectroscopy has become a powerful technique for probing
non-equilibrium dynamics of internal (pseudospin) degrees of freedom of
interacting systems. In many theoretical treatments, the key to understanding
the dynamics has been to assume the external (motional) degrees of freedom are
decoupled from the pseudospin degrees of freedom. Determining the validity of
this approximation -- known as the spin model approximation -- is complicated,
and has not been addressed in detail. Here we shed light in this direction by
calculating Ramsey dynamics exactly for two interacting spin-1/2 particles in a
harmonic trap. We focus on $s$-wave-interacting fermions in quasi-one and
two-dimensional geometries. We find that in 1D the spin model assumption works
well over a wide range of experimentally-relevant conditions, but can fail at
time scales longer than those set by the mean interaction energy. Surprisingly,
in 2D a modified version of the spin model is exact to first order in the
interaction strength. This analysis is important for a correct interpretation
of Ramsey spectroscopy and has broad applications ranging from precision
measurements to quantum information and to fundamental probes of many-body
systems.
