Phys.org January 27, 2024 Collective couplings of atomic dipoles to a shared electromagnetic environment produce a wide range of many-body phenomena. A team of researchers in the USA (University of Colorado, Colorado State University) reported on the direct observation of resonant electric dipole-dipole interactions in a cubic array of atoms in the many-excitation limit. The interactions produced spatially dependent cooperative Lamb shifts when spectroscopically interrogating the millihertz-wide optical clock transition in strontium-87. They showed that the ensemble-averaged shifts could be suppressed below the level of evaluated systematic uncertainties for optical atomic clocks. They demonstrated that excitation of the atomic dipoles […]
Category Archives: Atomic clocks
Quantum algorithms bring ions to a standstill
Phys.org December 13, 2021 Most ions and other charged particles of spectroscopic interest lack the fast, cycling transitions that are necessary for direct laser cooling. In most cases, they can still be cooled sympathetically through their Coulomb interaction with a second, coolable ion species confined in the same potential. If the charge-to-mass ratios of the two ion types are too mismatched, the cooling of certain motional degrees of freedom becomes difficult. This limits both the achievable fidelity of quantum gates and the spectroscopic accuracy. Researchers in Germany developed algorithmic cooling protocol for transferring phonons from poorly to efficiently cooled modes. […]