An “optical lattice clock” benefits from a low quantum-projection noise (QPN) by simultaneously interrogating many atoms trapped in an optical lattice [1]. The essence of the scheme is an engineered perturbation based on the “magic frequency” protocol, which has been proven successful up to 10-18 uncertainty [2-4]. About a thousand atoms enable such clocks to achieve 10-18 stability in a few...
We describe work at NIST to develop next-generation chip-scale atomic clocks based on optical transitions in vapor cells and thermal beams.
We report on development of a strontium optical lattice clock built with integrated photonics. We implement free-space laser beam control of positioning, pointing, shaping, polarization, and integration with metasurface optics, and absolute laser-frequency stabilization with waveguide supercontinuum generators. Such use of integrated photonics can simplify the system integration of Sr clocks....
