Description
The state-of-the-art optical atomic clocks rely on trapping, cooling and readout at the same point in space and the cooling stages are separated in time; however, they suffer from finite dead-time between measurements leading to additional noise, and complicated control sequences. The next generation of optical clocks should be continuous with inherently zero dead-time and steady-state operation which simplifies control.
We plan to demonstrate this with a continuous beam of neutral strontium-88 that is cooled and compressed by a sequence of laser cooling stages separated in space. The continuous beam emerges from a Zeeman slower with a speed around 30$\,$ms$^{-1}$ and enters an angled 2D MOT which will act to (1.) cool and compress the atomic beam transversely (2.) deflect the atomic beam into a cavity region that is protected from harmful stray light (3.) focus the atomic beam in 1 axis to overlap with the mode volume of a linear cavity. With this continuous, compressed, cooled and dense fluxed of atoms through the cavity, we plan to perform spectroscopy on the 7.6$\,$kHz wide inter-combination line with a cavity enhanced scheme called NICE-OHMS that is immune to cavity noise (to first order), and then characterize the experiment's performance as a frequency standard.
| Presenter name | Julian Robinson-Tait |
|---|---|
| How will you attend ICAP-27? | I am planning on in-person attendance |
