English

An additive-manufactured microwave cavity for a compact cold-atom clock

Atomic Physics 2023-06-21 v1

Abstract

We present an additive-manufactured microwave cavity for a Ramsey-type, double resonance, compact cold-atom clock. Atoms can be laser cooled inside the cavity using a grating magneto-optic trap (GMOT) with the cavity providing an excellent TE011-like mode while maintaining sufficient optical access for atomic detection. The cavity features a low Q-factor of 360 which conveniently reduces the cavity-pulling of the future clock. Despite the potential porosity of the additive-manufacturing process, we demonstrate that the cavity is well-suited for vacuum. A preliminary clock setup using cold atoms allows for measuring the Zeeman spectrum and Rabi oscillations in the cavity which enables us to infer excellent field uniformity and homogeneity respectively, across the volume accessed by the cold atoms. Ramsey spectroscopy is demonstrated, indicating the cavity is suitable for clock applications. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the future clock.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.02898,
  title  = {An additive-manufactured microwave cavity for a compact cold-atom clock},
  author = {Etienne Batori and Alan Bregazzi and Ben Lewis and Paul Griffin and Erling Riis and Gaetano Mileti and Christoph Affolderbach},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.02898},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

8 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:25:46.200Z