A new scheme of compact cold atom clock based on diffuse laser cooling in a cylindrical cavity

Abstract

We present a new scheme of compact Rubidium cold-atom clock which performs the diffuse light cooling, the microwave interrogation and the detection of the clock signal in a cylindrical microwave cavity. The diffuse light is produced by the reflection of the laser light at the inner surface of the microwave cavity. The pattern of injected laser beams is specially designed to make most of the cold atoms accumulate in the center of the microwave cavity. The microwave interrogation of cold atoms in the cavity leads to Ramsey fringes whose line-width is 24.5 Hz and the contrast of 95.6% when the free evolution time is 20 ms. The frequency stability of $7.3\times10^{-13}\tau^{-1/2}$ has been achieved recently. The scheme of this physical package can largely reduce the complexity of the cold atom clock, and increase the performance of the clock.