Enhancing the Performance of an Optical Lattice Clock with Multiple Atomic Ensembles
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The remarkable precision of optical atomic clocks enables new applications and offers sensitivity to novel and exotic physics. In this talk I will explain the motivation and operating principles of a multiplexed strontium optical lattice clock, which consists of two or more atomic ensembles of trapped, ultra-cold strontium in one vacuum chamber. This miniature clock network enables us to bypass the primary limitations to typical atomic clock comparisons and achieve new levels of precision.
I will present recent experimental results in which we make use of multiple atomic ensembles to perform enhanced phase estimation and demonstrate a reduced absolute instability of an optical lattice clock. I will also briefly present the results of a blinded, laboratory-based precision test of the gravitational redshift at the millimeter to centimeter scale. And finally, I will discuss recent measurements of the radiative decay rate of the 3P0 - 1S0 optical clock transition in strontium-87, and prospects for leveraging the level structure of strontium to convert depolarization errors into erasure errors and thereby enhance the performance of differential clock comparisons.