Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Compact atomic clock prototype based on coherent population trapping

2014; EDP Sciences; Volume: 77; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1051/epjconf/20147700017

2101-6275

Jean-Marie Danet, Olga Kozlova, Peter Yun, Stéphane Guérande, Emeric de Clercq,

Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications

Toward the next generations of compact atomic clocks, clocks based on coherent population trapping (CPT) offer a very interesting alternative. Thanks to CPT, a quantum interfering process, this technology has made a decisive step in the miniaturization direction. Fractional frequency stability of 1.5x10-10 at 1 s has been demonstrated in commercial devices of a few cm3. The laboratory prototype presented here intends to explore what could be the ultimate stability of a CPT based device. To do so, an original double-Λ optical scheme and a pulsed interrogation have been implemented in order to get a good compromise between contrast and linewidth. A study of two main sources of noise, the relative intensity and the local oscillator (LO) noise, has been performed. By designing simple solutions, it led to a new fractional frequency limitation lower than 4x10-13 at 1 s integration. Such a performance proves that such a technology could rival with classical ones as double resonance clocks.