Seconds-scale coherence in a tweezer-array optical clock

TL;DR

This paper introduces a scalable optical clock platform using ultracold strontium atoms in optical tweezers, achieving over 3 seconds of coherence and high duty cycles, with potential for entanglement-enhanced precision.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel tweezer-array optical clock with long coherence times and high duty cycles, combining scalability and isolation for advanced quantum metrology.

Findings

Achieved >3 second coherence times

Recorded duty cycles up to 96%

Stability comparable to leading platforms

Abstract

Optical clocks based on atoms and ions achieve exceptional precision and accuracy, with applications to relativistic geodesy, tests of relativity, and searches for dark matter. Achieving such performance requires balancing competing desirable features, including a high particle number, isolation of atoms from collisions, insensitivity to motional effects, and high duty-cycle operation. Here we demonstrate a new platform based on arrays of ultracold strontium atoms confined within optical tweezers that realizes a novel combination of these features by providing a scalable platform for isolated atoms that can be interrogated multiple times. With this tweezer-array clock, we achieve greater than 3 second coherence times and record duty cycles up to 96%, as well as stability commensurate with leading platforms. By using optical tweezer arrays --- a proven platform for the controlled creation of entanglement through microscopic control --- this work further promises a new path toward combining entanglement enhanced sensitivities with the most precise optical clock transitions.