Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 3: Präzisionsmessungen und Metrologie 1

Q 3.7: Talk

Monday, March 12, 2012, 12:00–12:15, V47.02

Strontium in an Optical Lattice as a Mobile Frequency Reference — •Ole Kock, Steven Johnson, Yeshpal Singh, and Kai Bongs — University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

Using the higher frequencies (10¹⁵ Hz) of optical atomic transitions for clocks enable a greater accuracy than the current microwave frequency (10¹⁰ Hz) standard. Optical clocks have now achieved a performance significantly beyond that of the best microwave clocks. With the rapidly improving performance of optical clocks, in the future, most applications requiring the highest accuracy will require optical clocks. We are setting up an experiment aimed at a mobile frequency standard based on strontium (Sr) in a blue detuned optical lattice. Sr is an alkaline-earth element. The dipole transitions in Sr from the singlet state to the triplet state is forbidden, which results in a long meta-stable lifetime and as narrow line widths as one mHz. Compared to other Strontium experiments with Zeeman Slowers our setup implements the first 2D-MOT for pre cooling the atoms. An up to date progress on the 3D-MOT of this compact and robust frequency standard will be given. For the emerging field of optical clocks in space, this project is developing technologies for the Space Optical Clock (SOC2) project.