A Faraday-shielded, DC Stark-free optical lattice clock

Published

May 2, 2018

Author(s)

Kyle P. Beloy, Xiaogang Zhang, William F. McGrew, Nathan M. Hinkley, Tai H. Yoon, Daniele Nicolodi, Robert J. Fasano, Stefan A. Schaeffer, Roger C. Brown, Andrew D. Ludlow

Abstract

We demonstrate the absence of a DC Stark shift in an ytterbium optical lattice clock. Stray electric fields are suppressed through the introduction of an in-vacuum Faraday shield. Still, the effectiveness of the shielding must be experimentally assessed. Such diagnostics are accomplished by applying high voltage to six electrodes, which are grounded in normal operation to form part of the Faraday shield. Our measurements place a constraint on the DC Stark shift at the 10^-20 level, in units of the clock frequency. Moreover, we discuss a potential source of error in strategies to precisely measure or cancel non-zero DC Stark shifts. With this consideration, we find that Faraday shielding, complemented with experimental validation, provides an optimal solution to the problem of DC Stark shifts in optical lattice clocks.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

DC Stark, optical clock, optical frequency standard, optical lattice clock, Stark, static Stark, ytterbium

Citation

Beloy, K. , Zhang, X. , McGrew, W. , Hinkley, N. , Yoon, T. , Nicolodi, D. , Fasano, R. , Schaeffer, S. , Brown, R. and Ludlow, A. (2018), A Faraday-shielded, DC Stark-free optical lattice clock, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925042 (Accessed October 3, 2025)