Abstract

We report on recent realization of an optical lattice clock operating on the¹S₀-³P₀ transition in⁸⁸ Sr, at LENS laboratories. The clock transition is excited with the technique of magnetic field-induced spectroscopy¹. New experimental techniques has also been developed in order to simplifies the clock spectroscopy in Sr atoms². The first new method helps in the first search of the clock transition without the use of extensive frequency metrology hardware and in particular optical frequency combs. This technique exploits a near coincidence in the atomic wavelengths of the¹S₀-³P₀ clock and the¹S₀-³P₁ second stage cooling transitions in Sr, which are only 5 THz far apart. This coincidence enables the use of an optical (transfer) cavity to reference the frequency of the clock transition relative to that of the much stronger cooling transition. Secondly we reduce the complexity of the experimental setup by using only semiconductor laser sources in the apparatus³. With this setup, about 10^{4 88}Sr atoms are trapped in a 1D lattice formed by 200 mW of radiation tuned near the magic wavelength at 813 nm.

© 2009 IEEE