A high-performance optical lattice clock based on bosonic atoms

Abstract

Optical lattice clocks with uncertainty and instability in the $10^{-17}$-range and below have so far been demonstrated exclusively using fermions. Here, we demonstrate a bosonic optical lattice clock with $3\times 10^{-18}$ instability and $2.0\times 10^{-17}$ accuracy, both values improving on previous work by a factor 30. This was enabled by probing the clock transition with an ultra-long interrogation time of 4 s, using the long coherence time provided by a cryogenic silicon resonator, by careful stabilization of relevant operating parameters, and by operating at low atom density. This work demonstrates that bosonic clocks, in combination with highly coherent interrogation lasers, are suitable for high-accuracy applications with particular requirements, such as high reliability, transportability, operation in space, or suitability for particular fundamental physics topics. As an example, we determine the $^{88}\textrm{Sr} - ^{87}$Sr isotope shift with 12 mHz uncertainty.