Test of special relativity using a fiber network of optical clocks
Abstract
Phase compensated optical fiber links enable high accuracy atomic clocks separated by thousands of kilometers to be compared with unprecedented statistical resolution. By searching for a daily variation of the frequency difference between four strontium optical lattice clocks in different locations throughout Europe connected by such links, we improve upon previous tests of time dilation predicted by special relativity. We obtain a constraint on the Robertson--Mansouri--Sexl parameter quantifying a violation of time dilation, thus improving by a factor of around two the best known constraint obtained with Ives--Stilwell type experiments, and by two orders of magnitude the best constraint obtained by comparing atomic clocks. This work is the first of a new generation of tests of fundamental physics using optical clocks and fiber links. As clocks improve, and as fiber links are routinely operated, we expect that the tests initiated in this paper will improve by orders of magnitude in the near future.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1703.04426,
title = {Test of special relativity using a fiber network of optical clocks},
author = {P. Delva and J. Lodewyck and S. Bilicki and E. Bookjans and G. Vallet and R. Le Targat and P. -E. Pottie and C. Guerlin and F. Meynadier and C. Le Poncin-Lafitte and O. Lopez and A. Amy-Klein and W. -K. Lee and N. Quintin and C. Lisdat and A. Al-Masoudi and S. Dörscher and C. Grebing and G. Grosche and A. Kuhl and S. Raupach and U. Sterr and I. R. Hill and R. Hobson and W. Bowden and J. Kronjäger and G. Marra and A. Rolland and F. N. Baynes and H. S. Margolis and P. Gill},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1703.04426},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
6 pages, 3 figures, published in Phys. Rev. L