Demonstration of the nearly continuous operation of an <sup>171</sup> Yb optical lattice clock for half a year
Takumi Kobayashi, Daisuke Akamatsu, Kazumoto Hosaka, Yusuke Hisai, Masato Wada, Hajime Inaba, Tomonari Suzuyama, Feng-Lei Hong, Masami Yasuda
Abstract
Abstract Optical lattice clocks surpass primary Cs microwave clocks in frequency stability and accuracy, and are promising candidates for a redefinition of the second in the International System of Units (SI). However, the robustness of optical lattice clocks has not yet reached a level comparable to that of Cs fountain clocks which contribute to International Atomic Time (TAI) by the nearly continuous operation. In this paper, we report the long-term operation of an 171 Yb optical lattice clock with a coverage of 80.3% for half a year including uptimes of 93.9% for the first 24 days and 92.6% for the last 35 days. This enables a nearly dead-time-free frequency comparison of the optical lattice clock with TAI over months, which provides a link to the SI second with an uncertainty of low 10 −16 . By using this link, the absolute frequency of the 1 S <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msub> <mml:mi/> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> P 0 clock transition of 171 Yb is measured as 518 295 836 590 863.54(26) Hz with a fractional uncertainty of 5.0 × 10 −16 . This value is in agreement with the recommended frequency of 171 Yb as a secondary representation of the second.