Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

An 27Al+ quantum-logic clock with systematic uncertainty below 10-18

Published

Author(s)

Samuel M. Brewer, Jwo-Sy Chen, Aaron M. Hankin, Ethan Clements, Chin-wen Chou, David J. Wineland, David Hume, David Leibrandt

Abstract

We describe an optical atomic clock based on quantum-logic spectroscopy of the 1S0 <- -> 3P0 transition in 27Al+ with a systematic uncertainty of 9.0 x 10-19 and a frequency stability of 1.2 X 10-15/(T1/2). A 25Mg+ ion is simultaneously trapped with the 27Al+ ion and used for sympathetic cooling and state readout during clock operation. Improvements in a new trap have led to reduced secular motion heating, compared to previous 27Al+ clocks, enabling clock operation with ion motion near the three-dimensional ground state. Operating the clock with a lower trap drive frequency has reduced excess micromotion, compared to previous 27Al+ clocks, leading to a reduced time-dilation shift uncertainty. Other systematic uncertainties including those due to blackbody radiation and the second-order Zeeman effect have also been reduced.
Citation
Physical Review Letters

Keywords

Atomic clocks, lattic clocks, optical clocks, Precision Measurements, Trapped ions

Citation

Brewer, S. , Chen, J. , Hankin, A. , Clements, E. , Chou, C. , Wineland, D. , Hume, D. and Leibrandt, D. (2019), An <sup>27</sup>Al+ quantum-logic clock with systematic uncertainty below 10<sup>-18</sup>, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=927399 (Accessed December 13, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created July 15, 2019, Updated April 23, 2021