Demonstration of 4.8 × 10−17 stability at 1 s for two independent optical clocks

Oelker, E. et al. (2019) Demonstration of 4.8 × 10−17 stability at 1 s for two independent optical clocks. Nature Photonics, 13(10), pp. 714-719. (doi: 10.1038/s41566-019-0493-4)

Abstract

Optical atomic clocks require local oscillators with exceptional optical coherence owing to the challenge of performing spectroscopy on their ultranarrow-linewidth clock transitions. Advances in laser stabilization have thus enabled rapid progress in clock precision. A new class of ultrastable lasers based on cryogenic silicon reference cavities has recently demonstrated the longest optical coherence times to date. Here we utilize such a local oscillator with two strontium (Sr) optical lattice clocks to achieve an advance in clock stability. Through an anti-synchronous comparison, the fractional instability of both clocks is assessed to be 4.8×10−17/√τ for an averaging time τ (in seconds). Synchronous interrogation enables each clock to average at a rate of 3.5×10−17/√τ, dominated by quantum projection noise, and reach an instability of 6.6 × 10−19 over an hour-long measurement. The ability to resolve sub-10−18-level frequency shifts in such short timescales will affect a wide range of applications for clocks in quantum sensing and fundamental physics.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Oelker, Dr Eric
• Authors: Oelker, E., Hutson, R. B., Kennedy, C. J., Sonderhouse, L., Bothwell, T., Goban, A., Kedar, D., Sanner, C., Robinson, J. M., Marti, G. E., Matei, D. G., Legero, T., Giunta, M., Holzwarth, R., Riehle, F., Sterr, U., and Ye, J.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Physics and Astronomy
• Journal Name: Nature Photonics
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 1749-4885
• ISSN (Online): 1749-4893
• Published Online: 29 July 2019

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