Demonstration of the Systematic Evaluation of an Optical Lattice Clock Using the Drift-Insensitive Self-Comparison Method

The self-comparison method is a powerful tool in the uncertainty evaluation of optical lattice clocks, but any drifts will cause a frequency offset between the two compared clock loops and thus lead to incorrect measurement result. We propose a drift-insensitive self-comparison method to remove this...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chihua Zhou, Xiaotong Lu, Benquan Lu, Yebing Wang, Hong Chang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2021-01-01
Series:Applied Sciences
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/11/3/1206
Description
Summary:The self-comparison method is a powerful tool in the uncertainty evaluation of optical lattice clocks, but any drifts will cause a frequency offset between the two compared clock loops and thus lead to incorrect measurement result. We propose a drift-insensitive self-comparison method to remove this frequency offset by adjusting the clock detection sequence. We also experimentally demonstrate the validity of this method in a one-dimensional <sup>87</sup>Sr optical lattice clock. As the clock laser frequency drift exists, the measured frequency difference between two identical clock loops is (240 ± 34) mHz using the traditional self-comparison method, while it is (−15 ± 16) mHz using the drift-insensitive self-comparison method, indicating that this frequency offset is cancelled within current measurement precision. We further use the drift-insensitive self-comparison technique to measure the collisional shift and the second-order Zeeman shift of our clock and the results show that the fractional collisional shift and the second-order Zeeman shift are 4.54(28) × 10<sup>−16</sup> and 5.06(3) × 10<sup>−17</sup>, respectively.
ISSN:2076-3417