A compact cold atom cavity clock

Bregazzi, A. and Batori, E. and Lewis, B. and Affolderbach, C. and Mileti, G. and Griffin, P. and Riis, E. (2024) A compact cold atom cavity clock. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2889 (1). 012034. ISSN 1742-6588 (https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/2889/1/012034)

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Abstract

A sample of laser cooled atoms are created inside an additively manufactured loop-gap microwave cavity using a grating magneto-optic trap requiring only a single laser cooling beam. Using a Ramsey excitation scheme with free evolution times of up to 20 ms and based on the 87Rb ground-state clock transition, we demonstrate a short-term stability of 1.5×10−11τ−1/2, averaging down to 2×10−12 after 100 s. The short-term stability limit is found to be dominated by the signal to noise ratio of the Ramsey fringes while for longer timescales the limitation is magnetic field noise due to the experiment being magnetically unshielded. Potential improvements to the setup and its operation point to a viable route forward for a miniaturised atomic microwave clock.

ORCID iDs

Bregazzi, A. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-3916-4498, Batori, E., Lewis, B., Affolderbach, C., Mileti, G., Griffin, P. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0134-7554 and Riis, E. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3225-5302;
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