A neutral atom frequency reference in the deep UV with 10^(-15) range uncertainty
Abstract
We present an assessment of the (6s^{2})1S0 -> (6s7s)3P0 clock transition frequency in 199Hg with an uncertainty reduction of nearly three orders of magnitude and demonstrate an atomic quality factor, Q, of ~10^(14). The 199Hg atoms are confined in a vertical lattice trap with light at the newly determined magic wavelength of 362.5697 +/-0.0011 nm and at a lattice depth of 20Er. The atoms are loaded from a single stage magneto-optical trap with cooling light at 253.7 nm. The high Q factor is obtained with an 80 ms Rabi pulse at 265.6 nm. The frequency of the clock transition is found to be 1 128 575 290 808 162.0 +/-6.4 (sys.) +/-0.3 (stat.) Hz (fractional uncertainty = 5.7x10^(-15)). Neither an atom number nor second order Zeeman dependence have yet to be detected. Only three laser wavelengths are used for the cooling, lattice trapping, probing and detection.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1201.3544,
title = {A neutral atom frequency reference in the deep UV with 10^(-15) range uncertainty},
author = {J. J. McFerran and L. Yi and S. Mejri and S. Di Manno and W. Zhang and J. Guéna and Y. Le Coq and S. Bize},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1201.3544},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
5 pages, 6 figures