60 research outputs found
Evaluation of Doppler Shifts to Improve the Accuracy of Primary Atomic Fountain Clocks
We demonstrate agreement between measurements and ab initio calculations of
the frequency shifts caused by distributed cavity phase variations in the
microwave cavity of a primary atomic fountain clock. Experimental verification
of the finite element models of the cavities gives the first quantitative
evaluation of this leading uncertainty and allows it to be reduced to delta nu
/ nu = 8.4\times10^-17. Applying these experimental techniques to clocks with
improved microwave cavities will yield negligible distributed cavity phase
uncertainties, less than \pm1\times10^-17.Comment: To appear in PR
A new photon recoil experiment: towards a determination of the fine structure constant
We report on progress towards a measurement of the fine structure constant to
an accuracy of or better by measuring the ratio of the
Planck constant to the mass of the cesium atom. Compared to similar
experiments, ours is improved in three significant ways: (i) simultaneous
conjugate interferometers, (ii) multi-photon Bragg diffraction between same
internal states, and (iii) an about 1000 fold reduction of laser phase noise to
-138 dBc/Hz. Combining that with a new method to simultaneously stabilize the
phases of four frequencies, we achieve 0.2 mrad effective phase noise at the
location of the atoms. In addition, we use active stabilization to suppress
systematic effects due to beam misalignment.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Multilayer gas cells for sub-Doppler spectroscopy
We have carried out theoretical research on ultra-high resolution
spectroscopy of atoms (or molecules) in the suggested cell with a series of
plane-parallel thin gas layers between spatially separated gas regions of this
cell for optical pumping and probing. It is shown the effective velocity
selection of optically pumped atoms because of their specific transit time and
collisional relaxation in such a cell, which lead to narrow sub-Doppler
resonances in absorption of the probe monochromatic light beam. Resolution of
this spectroscopic method is analyzed in cases of stationary and definite
nonstationary optical pumping of atoms by the broadband radiation versus
geometrical parameters of given cells and pumping intensity. The suggested
multilayer gas cell is the compact analog of many parallel atomic (molecular)
beams and may be used also as the basis of new compact optical frequency
standards of high accuracy.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
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