Cold Beam Optical Clock with Multifrequency Spectroscopy

Abstract

We demonstrate an optical clock based on Ramsey-Bordé interferometry in a laser-cooled ${}^{40}$Ca beam. The mean velocity is reduced by an order of magnitude relative to a thermal beam and the transverse temperature approaches the Doppler limit, enabling the measurement of sub-kHz linewidth fringes in a compact interferometer. Using tailored phase and intensity modulation of the spectroscopy laser to add uniform frequency sidebands, we interrogate atoms throughout the transverse velocity distribution, increasing the Ramsey-Bordé fringe amplitude by a factor of 14 and improving the Allan deviation to $3.4\times 10^{-15}$ at one second averaging time.

6 pages, 4 figures