Optical atomic coherence at the one-second time scale

Abstract

Highest resolution laser spectroscopy has generally been limited to single trapped ion systems due to rapid decoherence which plagues neutral atom ensembles. Here, precision spectroscopy of ultracold neutral atoms confined in a trapping potential shows superior optical coherence without any deleterious effects from motional degrees of freedom, revealing optical resonance linewidths at the hertz level with an excellent signal to noise ratio. The resonance quality factor of 2.4 x 10^{14} is the highest ever recovered in any form of coherent spectroscopy. The spectral resolution permits direct observation of the breaking of nuclear spin degeneracy for the 1S0 and 3P0 optical clock states of 87Sr under a small magnetic bias field. This optical NMR-like approach allows an accurate measurement of the differential Lande g-factor between the two states. The optical atomic coherence demonstrated for collective excitation of a large number of atoms will have a strong impact on quantum measurement and precision frequency metrology.

in press (2006)

References in corpus (2)

• Optical clocks based on ultra-narrow three-photon resonances in alkaline earth atoms
• Precision frequency measurement of visible intercombination lines of strontium

Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Mott Insulators of Ultracold Fermionic Alkaline Earth Atoms: Underconstrained Magnetism and Chiral Spin Liquid
• Observation of the 1S0 - 3P0 clock transition in 27Al+
• Nuclear Spin Effects in Optical Lattice Clocks
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• Prospects for precision measurements of atomic helium using direct frequency comb spectroscopy
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• Sub-Doppler laser cooling and magnetic trapping of erbium
• Ultracold molecules: vehicles to scalable quantum information processing
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• Measurement of Dicke Narrowing in Electromagnetically Induced Transparency
• Measurement of the Spin-forbidden Decay rate (3s3d)${}^1$D${}_2$ $\to$ (3s3p)${}^3$P${}_{2,1}$ in ${}^{24}$Mg