Strontium ion clock
Wed May 24 08:34:24 BST 2006
- Title: An accurate optical lattice clock with 87Sr atoms
- Authors: Rodolphe Le Targat (SYRTE), Xavier Baillard (SYRTE), Mathilde Fouché (SYRTE), Anders Brusch (SYRTE), Olivier Tcherbakoff (SYRTE), Giovanni D. Rovera (SYRTE), Pierre Lemonde (SYRTE)
- Abstract: We report a frequency measurement of the 1S0-3P0 transition of 87Sr atoms in an optical lattice clock. The frequency is determined to be 429 228 004 229 879 (5) Hz with a fractional uncertainty that is comparable to state-of-the-art optical clocks with neutral atoms in free fall. Two previous measurements of this transition were found to disagree by about 2x10^{-13}, i.e. almost four times the combined error bar, instilling doubt on the potential of optical lattice clocks to perform at a high accuracy level. In perfect agreement with one of these two values, our measurement essentially dissipates this doubt.
[physics]
[permlink]