A chip-scale atomic beam clock.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 37311737.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-39166-1 and PMC identifier 10264367.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Atomic beams are a longstanding technology for atom-based sensors and clocks with widespread use in commercial frequency standards. Here, we report the demonstration of a chip-scale microwave atomic beam clock using coherent population trapping (CPT) interrogation in a passively pumped atomic beam device. The beam device consists of a hermetically sealed vacuum cell fabricated from an anodically bonded stack of glass and Si wafers in which lithographically defined capillaries produce Rb atomic beams and passive pumps maintain the vacuum environment. A prototype chip-scale clock is realized using Ramsey CPT spectroscopy of the atomic beam over a 10 mm distance and demonstrates a fractional frequency stability of ≈1.2 × 10<sup>-9</sup>/[Formula: see text] for integration times, τ, from 1 s to 250 s, limited by detection noise. Optimized atomic beam clocks based on this approach may exceed the long-term stability of existing chip-scale clocks, and leading long-term systematics are predicted to limit the ultimate fractional frequency stability below 10<sup>-12</sup>.