Ultrastable optical clock with two cold-atom ensembles

Optical clocks with a record low zero-dead-time instability of 6 × 10 –17 at 1 second are demonstrated in two cold-ytterbium systems. The two systems are interrogated by a shared optical local oscillator to nearly eliminate the Dick effect. Atomic clocks based on optical transitions are the most stable, and therefore precise, timekeepers available. These clocks operate by alternating intervals of atomic interrogation with the ‘dead’ time required for quantum state preparation and readout. This non-continuous interrogation of the atom system results in the Dick effect, an aliasing of frequency noise from the laser interrogating the atomic transition 1 , 2 . Despite recent advances in optical clock stability that have been achieved by improving laser coherence, the Dick effect has continually limited the performance of optical clocks. Here we implement a robust solution to overcome this limitation: a zero-dead-time optical clock that is based on the interleaved interrogation of two cold-atom ensembles 3 . This clock exhibits vanishingly small Dick noise, thereby achieving an unprecedented fractional frequency instability assessed to be for an averaging time τ in seconds. We also consider alternate dual-atom-ensemble schemes to extend laser coherence and reduce the standard quantum limit of clock stability, achieving a spectroscopy line quality factor of Q > 4 × 10 15 .