Effects of Small-Chain Superexchange Dynamics on Spin-Orbit Coupled Clock Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small-chain superexchange interactions and spin-orbit coupling influence spectroscopy in optical lattice clocks, revealing many-body effects that can impact clock precision and suggesting pathways for optimization.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical analysis of superexchange effects in one-dimensional chains within optical lattice clocks, highlighting the role of chain length and thermal distribution on spectroscopy.

Findings

Superexchange interactions modify spectroscopy observables.

Chain length significantly affects the observed effects.

Thermal distribution of chains influences measurement outcomes.

Abstract

Optical lattice clocks have set records in clock precision and accuracy. Continuing to advance their performance, via probing as many atoms for the longest interrogation time affordable, requires experimentally and theoretically studying a many-body lattice system. Motivated by recent experimental results on a Fermi-degenerate three-dimensional optical lattice clock, we present a theoretical overview of Ramsey and Rabi spectroscopy in one-dimensional chains. At realistic experimental temperatures and confinement conditions, atoms are spatially localized into small chains of $\approx 1-5$ atoms. We show that in the presence of spin-orbit coupling induced by the clock laser, the spectroscopy observables are modified by superexchange interactions within each chain, and depend strongly on the length of the chain. The thermal distribution of chain lengths thus plays a key role in the spectroscopy measurements. Our results offer insight into observable many-body effects in state-of-the-art lattice clocks and suggest new directions for optimizing clock performance.