Toward a High-Stability Coherent Population Trapping Cs Vapor-Cell Atomic Clock Using Autobalanced Ramsey Spectroscopy

Abstract

The next generation of alkali-vapor-cell atomic clocks are under development in labs around the world, with prototypes already demonstrating short-term fractional frequency stabilities one or two orders of magnitude better than for commercial clocks. However, stability is often spoiled at medium time scales (>100 s) by light-power-induced frequency-shift effects. The authors tackle this problem by applying autobalanced Ramsey interrogation, recently demonstrated on a Yb${}^{+}$ clock, to coherent-population-trapping systems---an approach that could really boost the development of vapor-cell clocks with white-noise-limited frequency stability over greatly extended time scales.