Observation of the 1S0-3P0 clock transition in 27Al+

Published

June 1, 2007

Author(s)

Till P. Rosenband, P. O. Schmidt, David Hume, Wayne M. Itano, Tara M. Fortier, Jason Stalnaker, Scott A. Diddams, Jeroen Koelemeij, James C. Bergquist, David J. Wineland

Abstract

We report for the first time, laser spectroscopy of the ¹S₀ – ³P₀ clock transition in ²⁷Al⁺. A single aluminum ion and a single beryllium ion are simultaneously confined in a linear Paul trap, coupled by their mutual Coulomb repulsion. This coupling allows the beryllium ion to sympathetically cool the aluminum ion, and also enables transfer of the aluminum's electronic state to the beryllium's hyperfine state, which can be measured with high fidelity. These techniques are applied to a measurement of the clock transition frequency, Ņ = 1 121 015 393 207 851(8) Hz. They are also used to measure the lifetime fo the metastable clock state, τ = 20.6+/-1.4 s, the ground state ¹S₀ g factor, gs = -0.00079248(14), and the excited stated ³P₀ g factor = -0.00197686(21) in units of Bohr magneton.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

98

Issue

220801

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

atom trapping and cooling, quantum computation, quantum information processing, quantum superpositions, quantum-state engineering, trapped ions

Citation

Rosenband, T. , Schmidt, P. , Hume, D. , Itano, W. , Fortier, T. , Stalnaker, J. , Diddams, S. , Koelemeij, J. , Bergquist, J. and Wineland, D. (2007), Observation of the ¹S₀-³P₀ clock transition in ²⁷Al⁺, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=50513 (Accessed October 9, 2025)