摘要
This article presents the principles and techniques of active optical clock, a special laser combining the laser physics of one-atom laser, bad-cavity gas laser, super-cavity stabilized laser and optical atomic clock together. As a simple example, an active optical clock based on thermal strontium atomic beam shows a quantum-limited linewidth of 0.51 Hz, which is insensitive to laser cavity-length noise, and may surpass the recorded narrowest 6.7 Hz of Hg ion optical clock and 1.5 Hz of very recent optical lattice clock. The estimated 0.1 Hz one-second instability and 0.27 Hz uncertainty are limited only by the rela- tivistic Doppler effect, and can be improved by cold atoms.
This article presents the principles and techniques of active optical clock, a special laser combining the laser physics of one-atom laser, bad-cavity gas laser, super-cavity stabilized laser and optical atomic clock together. As a simple example, an active optical clock based on thermal strontium atomic beam shows a quantum-limited linewidth of 0.51 Hz, which is insensitive to laser cavity-length noise, and may surpass the recorded narrowest 6.7 Hz of Hg ion optical clock and 1.5 Hz of very recent optical lattice clock. The estimated 0.1 Hz one-second instability and 0.27 Hz uncertainty are limited only by the relativistic Doppler effect, and can be improved by cold atoms.
基金
Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2005CB724500)
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10874009)
关键词
光学原子钟
激光线宽
活性原子钟
激光物理
optical atomic clock, laser linewidth, Schawlow-Townes formula, active atomic clock
