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HEPL / KIPAC Seminar

Friday, February 3, 2017

Tetsuya Ido

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan

Strontium Optical Lattice Clock and Realization of an Optical Time Scale

Abstract: Optical clocks have recently surpassed the best microwave standards in accuracy as well as stability, although the continuous operation of optical clocks for the time keeping is still a difficult task because we need to stabilize nearly ten of laser frequencies in addition to a clock laser. Nevertheless, building a time scale using optical clocks is definitely attractive. The strong point is the high stability of optical clocks which is more than an order of magnitude superior to fountain-based microwave standards.

To investigate such possibility of the “optically steered” time scale, we generated a real signal of a time scale for the recent half year (Apr –Sep, 2016). Once in a week, a strontium lattice clock was operated for 104 seconds, and used to measure a Hydrogen Maser frequency accurately obtained. For the conversion from the optical frequency to the microwave, we assumed the optical clock frequency identical to our latest absolute frequency measurement, which is 5×10-16 apart from that of the CIPM recommendation. The result of the four operations in the past three weeks allows us to estimate the linear drift rate of the HM frequency for the next week.

Bio: Not Available

Time: 3:00pm – 4:30pm

Location: Physics/Astrophysics Bldg., Kistler Conference Rooms 102/103 (Map)

(Light refreshments available2:45pm; Presentation begins at 3:00pm)

Open to All