Characterization and suppression of background light shifts in an optical lattice clock

Published

April 8, 2021

Author(s)

Robert J. Fasano, Yun Jhih Chen, Will McGrew, Wesley Brand, Richard W. Fox, Andrew Ludlow

Abstract

Experiments involving optical traps often require precise control of the ac Stark shifts induced by strong confining light fields. By carefully balancing light shifts between two atomic states of interest, optical traps at the magic wavelength have been especially effective at suppressing deleterious effects stemming from such shifts. Highlighting the power of this technique, optical clocks today exploit Lamb-Dicke confinement in magic- wavelength optical traps, in some cases realizing shift cancellation at the ten parts per billion level. Theory and empirical measurements can be used at varying levels of precision to determine the magic wavelength where shift cancellation occurs. However, lasers exhibit background spectra from amplified spontaneous emission or other lasing modes which can easily complicate measurement of the magic wavelength and its reproducibility in other experiments or conditions. Indeed, residual light shifts from laser background have plagued optical clock measurements for many years. In this work, we develop a simple theoretical model allowing prediction of light shifts from measured background spectra. We demonstrate good agreement between this model and measurements of the background light shift from an amplified diode laser in an Yb optical lattice clock. Additionally, we model and experimentally characterize the filtering effect of a volume Bragg grating bandpass filter, demonstrating that application of the filter can reduce background light shifts from amplified spontaneous emission well below the 10−18 level. This demonstration is corroborated by direct clock comparisons between a filtered amplified diode laser and a filtered titanium:sapphire laser.

Citation

Physical Review Applied

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.15.044016

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Keywords

amplified spontaneous emission, atomic clocks, lattice Stark shifts, optical lattice clocks

Citation

Fasano, R. , Chen, Y. , McGrew, W. , Brand, W. , Fox, R. and Ludlow, A. (2021), Characterization and suppression of background light shifts in an optical lattice clock, Physical Review Applied, [online], https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.15.044016, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931653 (Accessed October 10, 2025)