Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 34: Poster 1
Q 34.73: Poster
Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 16:30–19:00, Poster.I+II
Towards an optical Al+ clock using quantum logic — •Sana Amairi, Jannes Wübbena, Olaf Mandel, and Piet Schmidt — QUEST Institute of Experimental Quantum Metrology Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) and Leibniz University of Hannover Bundesallee 100 D-38116 Braunschweig, Germany
We present the status of our transportable optical clock based on quantum logic interrogation of a single Aluminum ion. The design goals for the frequency standard are an inaccuracy of 10−17 or better and relative stability of 10−15 in one second. 27Al+ has been chosen as the clock ion since it has a narrow (8 mHz) clock transition at 267 nm which exhibits no electric quadruple shift and a low sensitivity to black-body radiation. The 27Al+ *clock ion* will be trapped together with a 40Ca+ ion which will act as a *logic ion* and is used for sympathetic cooling and internal state detection of the clock ion with techniques developed for quantum information processing. We set up a linear trap with sapphire insulators and titanium electrodes to improve thermal management and minimal magnetic field distortions. The short term stability of the clock is provided by a 39.5 cm long ultra-stable optical cavity. The long cavity is estimated to be thermal noise limited at an instability level of 4× 10−17 at 1Hz. Finite element simulations were used to reduce the sensitivity to vertical and horizontal acceleration to below the 10−12/g level for alignment tolerances of up to 100 µ m. For Clock comparison beyond a fractional uncertainty of 10−16 we plan to build a portable system that allows us to travel to other sites and perform frequency measurements.