High-Accuracy Microwave Atomic Clock via Magic Optical Lattice

TL;DR

This paper proposes a microwave atomic clock using Rb and Cs atoms in a magic optical lattice, achieving high accuracy by canceling various shifts and uncertainties, comparable to optical atomic clocks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microwave atomic clock scheme utilizing magic optical lattices to significantly reduce systematic errors and improve accuracy.

Findings

Achieves an estimated accuracy better than 2×10⁻¹⁷.

Effectively cancels ac Stark shift at specific laser wavelengths.

Suppresses cavity, collision, and Doppler shifts in the clock.

Abstract

A microwave atomic clock scheme based on Rb and Cs atoms trapped in optical lattice with magic wavelength for clock transition is proposed. The ac Stark shift of clock transition due to trapping laser can be canceled at some specific laser wavelengths. Comparing with in fountain clock, the cavity related shifts, the collision shift, and the Doppler effect are eliminated or suppressed dramatically in atomic clock when the magic optical lattice is exploited. By carefully analyzing various sources of clock uncertainty, we conclude that a microwave atomic clock with an accuracy of better than $2\times10^{-17}$ is feasible, which is of the same accuracy as the expected best optical atomic clock.