Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Boyd, Martin M
• Zelevinsky, Tanya
• Ludlow, Andrew D
• Foreman, Seth M
• Blatt, Sebastian
• Ido, Tetsuya
• Ye, Jun

Titel

Optical Atomic Coherence at the 1-Second Time Scale

Ist Teil von

• Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 2006-12, Vol.314 (5804), p.1430-1433

Ort / Verlag

Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Quelle

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Highest-resolution laser spectroscopy has generally been limited to single trapped ion systems because of the rapid decoherence that plagues neutral atom ensembles. Precision spectroscopy of ultracold neutral atoms confined in a trapping potential now shows superior optical coherence without any deleterious effects from motional degrees of freedom, revealing optical resonance linewidths at the hertz level with a good signal-to-noise ratio. The resonance quality factor of 2.4 x 10¹⁴ is the highest ever recovered in any form of coherent spectroscopy. The spectral resolution permits direct observation of the breaking of nuclear spin degeneracy for the ¹S₀ and ³P₀ optical clock states of ⁸⁷Sr under a small magnetic bias field. This optical approach for excitation of nuclear spin states allows an accurate measurement of the differential Landé g factor between ¹S₀ and ³P₀. The optical atomic coherence demonstrated for collective excitation of a large number of atoms will have a strong impact on quantum measurement and precision frequency metrology.