A New Record in Atomic Clock Performance
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A new record in atomic clock performance by Travis L. Nicholson B.A., University of Colorado, 2006 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Physics 2015 This thesis entitled: A new record in atomic clock performance written by Travis L. Nicholson has been approved for the Department of Physics Jun Ye Dr. Deborah Jin Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Nicholson, Travis L. (Ph.D., Physics) A new record in atomic clock performance Thesis directed by Dr. Jun Ye The pursuit of better atomic clocks has advanced many fields of research, providing better quantum state control, new insights in quantum science, tighter limits on fundamental constant variation, and improved tests of relativity. This thesis describes the construction and characteriza- tion of an 87Sr optical lattice clock with a state-of-the-art stable laser. The performance of an atomic clock is typically gauged by two figures of merit: stability and total systematic uncertainty. Stabil- ity is the statistical precision of a clock or frequency standard, and the total systematic uncertainty is the combined uncertainty of all known systematic measurement biases. Several demonstrations of clock stability are presented in this work, one of which was the first to significantly outperform ion clocks. The most recent of these measurements resulted in fractional stability of 2.2 10 16 at × − 1 s, which is the best reported to date. These stability improvements are used for two systematic evaluations of our clock. The first full evaluation at 6.4 10 18 total uncertainty took the record × − for best clock performance. The second evaluation used improved strategies for systematic mea- surements, achieving a new best total systematic uncertainty of 2.1 10 18. With a combination × − of accurate radiation thermometry and temperature stabilization of the measurement environment, 18 we demonstrate the first lattice clock to achieve the longstanding goal of 10− level uncertainty in the formidable blackbody radiation shift. Improvements in the density, lattice ac Stark, and dc Stark shifts were also a result of innovations that are described in this thesis. Due to the low total uncertainty of the Sr clock, timekeeping based on this system would not lose a second in 15 billion years (longer than the age of the Universe), and it is sensitive to a gravitational redshift corresponding to a height change of 2 cm above the Earth’s surface. Dedication To my kind, brilliant, and loving wife, Dr. Huanqian Loh. And to my caring parents, Jeff and Johannah. v Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to those who have mentored me, worked with me, educated me, and supported me during my time at JILA. Firstly, I want to thank my advisor, Jun Ye. I have always admired Jun’s mastery of a wide range of physics, his intellectual rigor, and his infectious enthusiasm. The time and energy he spends making sure his students meet his high standards have greatly benefited those of us who were fortunate enough to be taken under his wing. Under his mentorship and guiding hand, I have grown immensely as a scientist and a professional. I am indebted to Jun for imparting his wisdom and technical expertise, and I thank him for his dedication to my education and my success. I worked on Jun’s second-generation strontium system (Sr2) from its construction until it was retired, and during that time I interacted with a number of talented graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. I am grateful to Martin Boyd, Gretchen Campbell, and Jan Thomsen for their contributions to the Sr2 system in its early days. Marty was a clever physicist and one of the funniest people I have worked with, and Gretchen impressed me with her ability to successfully work full time on both Sr1 and Sr2. Professor Jan Thomsen is a frequent visitor to our group, and he is a tremendously friendly person and a hardworking labmate. Sebastian Blatt and I were the two graduate students primarily assigned to Sr2, and we spent many long nights together building this experiment. Sebastian is a hardworking and driven scientist who understands that, in the face of long hours and the struggles that come with building a new experiment, people work better together when they make it a point to get out of the lab and have fun with one another. Shortly after we finished building the Sr2 system (first as a 88Sr machine), Sebastian and I vi were joined by graduate student Ben Bloom. As we were wrapping up our first result on Sr2, which was a study of optical Feshbach resonances, we were also joined by postdoctoral researcher Jason Williams. After this first result was published and Sebastian graduated, taking a postdoctoral position at Harvard, Ben, Jason, and I revamped Sr2 to be a 87Sr clock. No description of our trio could be better than to simply state that together the three of us achieved the best atomic clock, which is a feat I will always be proud of. As we were finishing our stability measurements, the lively and talented graduate student Sara Campbell started on Sr2. I am particularly grateful for Sara’s work on our Ti:saph laser system. Partway through the first Sr2 full systematic evaluation, Jason accepted a permanent position at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Around this time Ben decided to graduate early to take up an industry position at Intel. During the second Sr2 systematic evaluation, graduate student Ross Hutson and undergrad- uate Rees McNally became part of our team. Ross is a bright student who is always willing to lend a helping hand. Rees is a mature, adept young scientist, and I wish him luck as he heads off to Columbia University for graduate school. As Sara, Ross, Rees, and I were nearing the end of the second evaluation, we were joined by postdoctoral researcher George (Ed) Marti, who quickly proved to be a clever scientist. With the second evaluation complete, I began writing my thesis, and Sr2 was torn down to make space for Sara, Ross, and Ed’s new generation Sr system. Once, while they were clearing away the Sr2 apparatus, they asked me to take a quick break from writing my dissertation and give them a hand disassembling the main vacuum chamber. Although our last result was a fitting end to the system I had worked on for so many years, I confess that it was painful to hear the chamber lose vacuum as I turned the wrench. However, I am looking forward to hearing about the many results that are sure to come from the new Sr apparatus. My thanks are also due to my labmates on Sr1. Graduate student Michael Martin and I overlapped for the majority of my graduate career, and I am grateful for his hard work on the Sr clock laser. Mike is a thoughtful, gifted scientist, and I am certain he will continue to succeed at CalTech and beyond. Matthew Swallows was a postdoctoral researcher on Sr1, and I thank him vii for his work on the first Sr clock comparisons. I am sure that Matt’s meticulous nature is serving him well at AOSense. Michael Bishof, who has recently accepted a permanent position at Argonne National Labs, is an effective scientist and a great guy to watch movies with. Visiting researcher Yige Lin was a kind labmate and a thoughtful scientist, and I hope his Sr clock in Beijing is working well. Postdoctoral researcher Xibo Zhang is a hardworking and thorough colleague, and I am sure he will be a successful professor. Sarah Bromley is a friendly and dedicated young student who is off to a great start in her career. Tobias Bothwell recently joined Sr1, and I am sure he will continue Sr1’s tradition of success. I am grateful to postdoctoral researcher Wei Zhang for his work on the Sr clock laser, 689 nm cooling laser, and frequency comb. Wei is one of the hardest working and most dedicated people I have worked with. Lindsay Sonderhouse is a bright and friendly new graduate student, and I thank her for important contributions to the Sr laser systems. It has also been fun to interact with the grandfather of our team, Jan Hall. Due to Jan’s encyclopedic technical knowledge and enthusiasm for physics, conversations with him were always delightful and immensely educational. The Sr2 team has been fortunate to collaborate with many great scientists over the years. Paul Julienne provided invaluable theoretical work for the first Sr2 experiment, and since then he and I have collaborated on theoretical studies of intercombination line Feshbach resonances. It has always been an honor and a pleasure to work with Paul. I also want to thank our collaborator Weston Tew from the Sensor Science Division at NIST Gaithersburg. I am grateful for his masterful work on our thermometry project, which was one of the most important pieces of the second Sr2 systematic evaluation. I also wish to thank Gregory Strouse, also from NIST Sensor Science, for his role in our thermometry work. JILA theorist Ana Maria Rey has been a good friend to the Sr team, and I thank her for helping us understand the density shift, which was a central theme of the second publication from Sr2. I thank Murray Barrett for providing useful and enlightening analytic theory of the Sr2 decay measurement.