Gravitational Dephasing in Optical Lattice Clocks
Year: 2021
Type: preprint
Abstract: Optical lattice clocks can now resolve the height difference below 1 cm by means of the gravitational redshift. Further improvement in the stability enables the clocks to resolve the height difference of subsystems within an atomic ensemble that is conventionally interrogated as a single coherent spin state, resulting in the dephasing of the coherent spin state. This effect is observable with a clock of the stability of $\sim 10^{-21}$ by introducing single layer resolved imaging system for three dimensional optical lattice, and limits the 1 s stability of the clock at $10^{-19}$ without proper compensations. This can be the first observation of the decoherence of a quantum state by a gravitational effect, and the suppression of other systematic shifts to observe this gravitational dephasing seems feasible.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Akio Kawasaki
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3181925792