arXiv:1304.5944 · Physical Review Letters

Efficient Atomic Clocks Operated with Several Atomic Ensembles

Johannes Borregaard, Anders Søndberg Sørensen

Published Aug 27, 2013• 67 citations

Abstract

Atomic clocks are typically operated by locking a local oscillator (LO) to a single atomic ensemble. In this Letter, we propose a scheme where the LO is locked to several atomic ensembles instead of one. This results in an exponential improvement compared to the conventional method and provides a stability of the clock scaling as (αN)(-m/2) with N being the number of atoms in each of the m ensembles and α a constant depending on the protocol being used to lock the LO.

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.111.090802

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