Researchers at NIST have developed a compact, integrated photonics-based system for strontium optical-lattice clocks that could enable more accurate, transportable atomic clocks. The system integrates metasurface optics on semiconductor wafers to perform multiple optical functions simultaneously, reducing the spatial footprint and complexity compared to traditional optical systems. The compact design includes a modified quadrupole coil geometry for trapping and excellent optical access, while the metasurface optics provide alignment-free MOTs for strontium atoms at both 461 nm and 689 nm wavelengths. This scalable infrastructure could be extended to other quantum-sensor and quantum-information-processing applications.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/compact-strontium-optical-clock-integrated-photonics
Keywords: Strontium, Metasurface, Optical Phase
