Laser locking to the 199Hg 1S0 - 3P 0 clock transition with 5.4 × 10-15/ √τ fractional frequency instability

J. J. McFerran, D. V. Magalhães, C. Mandache, J. Millo, W. Zhang, Y. Le Coq, G. Santarelli, S. Bize

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25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

With 199Hg atoms confined in an optical lattice trap in the Lamb-Dicke regime, we obtain a spectral line at 265.6 nm for which the FWHM is ∼15 Hz. Here we lock an ultrastable laser to this ultranarrow 1S0 - 3P0 clock transition and achieve a fractional frequency instability of 5.4 × 10-15/√τ for τ ≤ 400 s. The highly stable laser light used for the atom probing is derived from a 1062.6 nm fiber laser locked to an ultrastable optical cavity that exhibits a mean drift rate of -6.0 × 10-17 s-1 (-16.9 mHzs-1 at 282 THz) over a six month period. A comparison between two such lasers locked to independent optical cavities shows a flicker noise limited fractional frequency instability of 4 × 10-16 per cavity.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3477-3479
Number of pages3
JournalOptics Letters
Volume37
Issue number17
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2012
Externally publishedYes

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