Cold collision shift cancelation and inelastic scattering in a Yb optical lattice clock

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that by optimizing excitation fraction in a 171Yb optical lattice clock, cold collision shifts can be canceled below 5x10^{-18}, with detailed measurements of inelastic scattering and interaction effects.

Contribution

It introduces a method to cancel cold collision shifts in a Yb optical lattice clock by adjusting excitation fraction and provides new measurements of inelastic scattering rates.

Findings

Cold collision shift canceled below 5x10^{-18} fractional frequency.

Measured inelastic two-body loss rates for 3P0-3P0 and 1S0-3P0 scattering.

Provided interaction shift data for unpolarized 171Yb samples.

Abstract

Recently, p-wave cold collisions were shown to dominate the density-dependent shift of the clock transition frequency in a 171Yb optical lattice clock. Here we demonstrate that by operating such a system at the proper excitation fraction, the cold collision shift is canceled below the 5x10^{-18} fractional frequency level. We report inelastic two-body loss rates for 3P0-3P0 and 1S0-3P0 scattering. We also measure interaction shifts in an unpolarized atomic sample. Collision measurements for this spin-1/2 171Yb system are relevant for high performance optical clocks as well as strongly-interacting systems for quantum information and quantum simulation applications.