Laser controlled atom source for optical clocks.

Precision timekeeping has been a driving force in innovation, from defining agricultural seasons to atomic clocks enabling satellite navigation, broadband communication and high-speed trading. We are on the verge of a revolution in atomic timekeeping, where optical clocks promise an over thousand-fold improvement in stability and accuracy. However, complex setups and sensitivity to thermal radiation pose limitations to progress. Here we report on an atom source for a strontium optical lattice clock which circumvents these limitations. We demonstrate fast (sub 100 ms), cold and controlled emission of strontium atomic vapours from bulk strontium oxide irradiated by a simple low power diode laser. Our results demonstrate that millions of strontium atoms from the vapour can be captured in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Our method enables over an order of magnitude reduction in scale of the apparatus. Future applications range from satellite clocks testing general relativity to portable clocks for inertial navigation systems and relativistic geodesy.

Ultra-stable clock laser system development towards space applications.

The increasing performance of optical lattice clocks has made them attractive for scientific applications in space and thus has pushed the development of their components including the interrogation lasers of the clock transitions towards being suitable for space, which amongst others requires making them more power efficient, radiation hardened, smaller, lighter as well as more mechanically stable. Here we present the development towards a space-compatible interrogation laser system for a strontium lattice clock constructed within the Space Optical Clock (SOC2) project where we have concentrated on mechanical rigidity and size. The laser reaches a fractional frequency instability of 7.9 × 10-16 at 300 ms averaging time. The laser system uses a single extended cavity diode laser that gives enough power for interrogating the atoms, frequency comparison by a frequency comb and diagnostics. It includes fibre link stabilisation to the atomic package and to the comb. The optics module containing the laser has dimensions 60 × 45 × 8 cm3; and the ultra-stable reference cavity used for frequency stabilisation with its vacuum system takes 30 × 30 × 30 cm3. The acceleration sensitivities in three orthogonal directions of the cavity are 3.6 × 10-10/g, 5.8 × 10-10/g and 3.1 × 10-10/g, where g ≈ 9.8 m/s2 is the standard gravitational acceleration.