A compact Sr magneto-optical trap system for field-deployable optical lattice clocks

2025/09/17 by Okamoto, Naohiro, Sato, Takumi, Aoki, Takatoshi +1 · 1 citation
#Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.13764

Abstract

We demonstrate a compact strontium (Sr) magneto-optical trap (MOT) realized in a single vacuum chamber without a Zeeman slower or a two-dimensional MOT. The MOT is directly loaded from a thermal atomic beam generated by an atomic oven. The entire vacuum chamber is maintained by a single ion pump, without employing differential pumping. At an oven temperature of 395 \mathrm^∘ C, the number of atoms in the MOT reaches 10⁷ with a loading rate of 10⁷ \mathrmatoms s^-1, while sustaining a background gas pressure in the 10^-9 Torr range. At this oven temperature, the MOT lifetime limited by collisions with background gas is ∼ 5 s, with the atom number primarily constrained by light-assisted two-body collisions. Our MOT system significantly simplifies the construction of field-deployable optical lattice clocks.

Citations

• Analyzing the optical pumping on the 5s4d ¹D₂-5s8p ¹P₁ transition in a magneto-optical trap of Sr atoms
• Universal gates for a metastable qubit in strontium-88
• A low-power microstructured atomic oven for alkaline-earth-like elements
• A lab-based test of the gravitational redshift with a miniature clock network
• Two-color grating magneto-optical trap for narrow-line laser cooling
• A pyramid MOT with integrated optical cavities as a cold atom platform for an optical lattice clock
• Guidelines for developing optical clocks with 10^-18 fractional frequency uncertainty
• Gravitational wave detection with optical lattice atomic clocks
• Cooling and trapping of atomic strontium

Cited by

• Direct Measurement of the 5s5p ¹P₁ → 5s4d ¹D₂ Decay Rate in Strontium
• Analyzing the optical pumping on the 5s4d ¹D₂-5s8p ¹P₁ transition in a magneto-optical trap of Sr atoms

Related

• A pyramid MOT with integrated optical cavities as a cold atom platform for an optical lattice clock
• Apparatus for producing single strontium atoms in an optical tweezer array
• A compact setup for loading magneto-optical trap in ultrahigh vacuum environment
• Efficient loading of thulium atoms in a compact MOT for a transportable optical clock
• Analyzing the optical pumping on the 5s4d ¹D₂-5s8p ¹P₁ transition in a magneto-optical trap of Sr atoms