Towards an optical clock for space

Compact, high-performance optical lattice clock based on bosonic atoms

authored by: S. Origlia, M. S. Pramod, S. Schiller, Y. Singh, K. Bongs, R. Schwarz, A. Al-Masoudi, S. Dörscher, S. Herbers, S. Häfner, U. Sterr, Ch Lisdat
Abstract: Optical clocks operated on satellites are expected to open up new opportunities in time transfer, geodesy, fundamental physics, and satellite navigation. Here we demonstrate an important first step towards this goal: a modular, compact, optical lattice clock (OLC) system that achieves 2.0×10-17 fractional uncertainty. The clock is operated with bosonic strontium and improves the performance of bosonic OLCs by a factor of 30. This has important implications for future use of bosonic OLCs in fundamental physics and metrology. We make use of the clock's metrological performance to measure, with independent clocks, the isotope shift of the S01→P03 transitions of Sr88 and Sr87, with an uncertainty of 12 mHz. The ratio of the transition frequencies is thus determined with 3×10-17 fractional uncertainty.
External Organisation(s): University Hospital Düsseldorf
University of Birmingham
National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB)
Type: Article
Journal: Physical Review A
Volume: 98
ISSN: 2469-9926
Publication date: 29.11.2018
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.053443 (Access: Unknown)

BibTeX

@article{0fafff10b22c469c873f175656ee7372,
title = "Towards an optical clock for space: Compact, high-performance optical lattice clock based on bosonic atoms",
abstract = "Optical clocks operated on satellites are expected to open up new opportunities in time transfer, geodesy, fundamental physics, and satellite navigation. Here we demonstrate an important first step towards this goal: a modular, compact, optical lattice clock (OLC) system that achieves 2.0×10-17 fractional uncertainty. The clock is operated with bosonic strontium and improves the performance of bosonic OLCs by a factor of 30. This has important implications for future use of bosonic OLCs in fundamental physics and metrology. We make use of the clock's metrological performance to measure, with independent clocks, the isotope shift of the S01→P03 transitions of Sr88 and Sr87, with an uncertainty of 12 mHz. The ratio of the transition frequencies is thus determined with 3×10-17 fractional uncertainty.",
author = "S. Origlia and Pramod, {M. S.} and S. Schiller and Y. Singh and K. Bongs and R. Schwarz and A. Al-Masoudi and S. D{\"o}rscher and S. Herbers and S. H{\"a}fner and U. Sterr and Ch Lisdat",
note = "Funding information: [ This work was funded in part by the FP7-MSCA-ITN Project No. 607493 FACT, the H2020-MSCA-RISE Project No. 691156 Q-Sense, and ESA Project No. 4000119716 (I-SOC). M.S.P. was partially supported by the Prof.-W. Behmenburg-Schenkung. The PTB team acknowledges funding from the DFG within CRC 1227 (DQ-mat, Project No. B02) and RTG 1729 and Project No. EMPIR 15SIB03 OC18. This project has received funding from the EMPIR program, cofinanced by the Participating States and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The authors are very grateful to C. Klempt and I. Kruse (Leibniz Universit{\"a}t Hannover) for providing the control software for the FPGA, to D. Iwaschko and U. Rosowski (Heinrich-Heine-Universit{\"a}t), to M. Misera, A. Koczwara, and A. Uhde (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt) for technical assistance and useful discussion, to T. Legero and D.G. Matei for making available the cryogenic silicon cavity, to E. Benkler for operating the frequency comb, and to C. Monte (PTB Berlin) for transmission measurements of BK-7 samples. We are indebted to the members of the SOC2 consortium for their contributions to the early development of the apparatus described here and for equipment loan. We thank L. Cacciapuoti (ESA) for constant support. This work was funded in part by the FP7-MSCA-ITN Project No. 607493 FACT, the H2020-MSCA-RISE Project No. 691156 Q-Sense, and ESA Project No. 4000119716 (I-SOC). M.S.P. was partially supported by the Prof.-W. Behmenburg-Schenkung. The PTB team acknowledges funding from the DFG within CRC 1227 (DQ-mat, Project No. B02) and RTG 1729 and Project No. EMPIR 15SIB03 OC18. This project has received funding from the EMPIR program, cofinanced by the Participating States and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. ",
year = "2018",
month = nov,
day = "29",
doi = "10.1103/PhysRevA.98.053443",
language = "English",
volume = "98",
journal = "Physical Review A",
issn = "2469-9926",
publisher = "American Physical Society",
number = "5",
}