The NIM Sr Optical Lattice Clock

Abstract

A 87Sr optical lattice clock is built at the National Institute of Metrology (NIM) of China. The atoms undergo two stages of laser cooling before being loaded into a horizontal optical lattice at the magic wavelength of 813 nm. After being interrogated by a narrow linewidth 698 nm clock laser pulse, the normalized excitation rate is measured to get the frequency error, which is then used to lock the clock laser to the ultra-narrow 1S0-3P0 clock transition. The total systematic uncertainty of the clock is evaluated to be 2.3 × 10-16, and the absolute frequency of the clock is measured to be 429 228 004 229 873.7(1.4) Hz with reference to the NIM5 cesium fountain.