A Fermi-degenerate three-dimensional optical lattice clock.

Campbell, S L; Hutson, R B; Marti, G E; Goban, A; Darkwah Oppong, N; McNally, R L; Sonderhouse, L; Robinson, J M et al. · Science · 2017

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Strontium optical lattice clocks have the potential to simultaneously interrogate millions of atoms with a high spectroscopic quality factor of 4 × 10<sup>17</sup> Previously, atomic interactions have forced a compromise between clock stability, which benefits from a large number of atoms, and accuracy, which suffers from density-dependent frequency shifts. Here we demonstrate a scalable solution that takes advantage of the high, correlated density of a degenerate Fermi gas in a three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice to guard against on-site interaction shifts. We show that contact interactions are resolved so that their contribution to clock shifts is orders of magnitude lower than in previous experiments. A synchronous clock comparison between two regions of the 3D lattice yields a measurement precision of 5 × 10<sup>-19</sup> in 1 hour of averaging time.