Absolute frequency measurement of a Yb optical clock at the limit of the Cs fountain

The recently concluded collaborative European project “Robust optical clocks for international timescales” (ROCIT) tackled some of the key challenges on the roadmap towards a redefinition of the SI second. This paper gives an overview of progress made on improving the robustness and automation of optical clocks and verifying their uncertainty budgets through coordinated international comparison campaigns. It also presents work on the incorporation of optical clocks into time scales, covering both their use to steer local physical time scales and their use for evaluations of hydrogen masers contributing data for the computation of International Atomic Time (TAI). The overall objective of the project was to bring European optical clocks to the stage where they could be operated routinely as secondary frequency standards, regularly contributing to TAI.

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Year-long optical time scale with sub-nanosecond capabilities

Formichella,

Signorile,

Thai

et al. 2024

Optica

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An atomic time scale is a method for marking events and the passage of time by using atomic frequency standards. Thanks to the superior performance of atomic clocks based on optical transitions, time scales generated with optical clocks have the potential to be more accurate and stable than those based on microwave clocks. In this work, we demonstrate an experimental optical time scale based on the INRiM Yb optical lattice clock and a hydrogen maser as a flywheel oscillator, showing sub-nanosecond accuracy over months-long periods and nanosecond accuracy over a 1-year period. The obtained results show that optical time scales have competitive performances even when the optical clock has a limited and non-uniformly distributed up-time. Consequently, we are working to include the Yb clock within the ensemble of clocks routinely used for the generation of the Italian time scale. Furthermore, these results represent a crucial step towards the future redefinition of the second of the International System of Units based on an optical transition.

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Absolute frequency measurement of a Yb optical clock at the limit of the Cs fountain

Cited by 3 publications

References 53 publications

Evaluation of systematic frequency shift and uncertainty of an optical clock based on Bayesian hierarchical model

Evaluation of systematic frequency shift and uncertainty of an optical clock based on Bayesian hierarchical model

Robust Optical Clocks for International Timescales (ROCIT)

Year-long optical time scale with sub-nanosecond capabilities

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