Friday, November 4, 2011, 3pm
Innovation Hall room 136
Ana Maria Rey
JILA
Building
the Most Precise Atomic Clocks in the World by Studying Many-Body
Physics
About 60 years ago, the second was defined by the Earth’s
rotation. However, with the discovery of quantum mechanics and the
quantized nature of the atomic energy levels, it became clear that
atomic clocks could be more accurate and more precise than any
mechanical or celestial reference previously known to man. Thus, in
1967 the second was redefined in terms of atomic transitions
in the microwave domain between two energy levels of cesium atoms. The
new generation of frequency standards, however,
are optical clocks based on single trapped ions or
neutral atoms with optical transition frequencies, i.e. up to six
orders of magnitude higher than microwaves. While currently the single
trapped ion clocks are at the forefront, neutral atom optical
clocks have the potential to outperform the latter due to the
possibility to simultaneously interrogate a large
number of neutral atoms; This will be however only possible if we can
understand and control atom-atom interactions. In
this talk I am going to describe our recent progress towards the
understanding of the atomic collisions during clock operation. I will
also explain why a precise
characterization of the many-body physics could be extremely useful
towards the further application of clock technology on quantum
information sciences.