A zero-dead-time strontium lattice clock with a stability at $10^{-19}$ level
Abstract
Optical atomic clocks play a crucial role in fundamental physics, relativistic geodesy, and the future redefinition of the SI second. Standard operation relies on cyclic interrogation sequences, which alternate between atomic interrogation and dead time used for state preparation and readout. This approach introduces the Dick effect, where laser frequency noise aliases onto the atomic transition frequency. Although reducing laser noise improves clock stability, the Dick effect remains a key limitation. In this work, we demonstrate a zero-dead-time optical clock based on two interleaved ensembles of cold atoms. Our system significantly suppresses this noise and achieves a fractional frequency instability at the level between 10,000 and 20,000 seconds over repeated measurements, with a best value of at seconds. The estimated long-term stability based on the combined data of these measurements reaches at one day. These results represent a more than ninefold improvement over a conventional single-ensemble clock, highlighting its potential for next-generation timekeeping applications.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.15100,
title = {A zero-dead-time strontium lattice clock with a stability at $10^{-19}$ level},
author = {Xiao-Yong Liu and Peng Liu and Jie Li and Yu-Chen Zhang and Yuan-Bo Wang and Zhi-Peng Jia and Xiang Zhang and Xian-Qing Zhu and De-Quan Kong and Wen-Lan Song and Guo-Zhen Niu and Yu-Meng Yang and Pei-Jun Feng and Xiang-Pei Liu and Xing-Yang Cui and Ping Xu and Xiao Jiang and Juan Yin and Sheng-Kai Liao and Cheng-Zhi Peng and Han-Ning Dai and Yu-Ao Chen and Jian-Wei Pan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.15100},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
17 pages, 11 figures, including supplemental materials