Hannover 2016 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 10: Precision Measurements and Metrology III (with Q)
A 10.1: Talk
Monday, February 29, 2016, 17:00–17:15, a310
Comparison of a 171Yb+ single ion clock and a 87Sr lattice clock with 2 × 10−17 uncertainty — •Nils Huntemann, Sören Dörscher, Ali Al-Masoudi, Sebastian Häfner, Christian Grebing, Burghard Lipphardt, Christian Tamm, Uwe Sterr, Christian Lisdat, and Ekkehard Peik — Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Bundesallee 100, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany
We report on a comparison of two optical clocks based on the 2S1/2 ↔ 2F7/2 transition of a single 171Yb+ ion stored in a radio-frequency Paul trap and on the 1S0 ↔ 3P0 transition of thousands of 87Sr atoms confined in an optical lattice. While the lattice clock achieves frequency instabilities smaller than 2 × 10−16 / √τ/s, a systematic uncertainty of 3 × 10−18 has been reported for the ion clock. From more than 80 h of acquired data, we determine the frequency ratio of the two clocks with a fractional uncertainty of 2.4 × 10−17. This is the smallest uncertainty achieved between clocks of different types to date and enables consistency tests in other laboratories developing the same combination of optical clocks. Moreover, the experiment is well suited to search for temporal variations of the fine structure constant α due to the large sensitivity of the E3 transition frequency. Data from this measurement and a similar one performed 2.5 years earlier constrain a potential linear drift α/α to below 1 × 10−17 / yr.
This work is supported by QUEST, the DFG within CRC 1128 (geo-Q) and RTG 1729, and the EMRP within ITOC and QESOCAS. The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP-participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.