iqClock

iqClock is a 3-year European project made up of research institutes and companies to develop a competitive European industry for optical clocks as well as strengthening and accelerating the pipeline of clock development.

In October 2018 iqClock was chosen as part of the European Union's Quantum Flagship initiative receiving €10,092,468.75 in funding.

Atomic optical clocks are the most precise time-telling tools. However, their size and complexity restricts them for use in the laboratory. The iqClock project aims to use superradiant lasers to produce new robust, compact, portable and commercially viable atomic optical clocks.

These new clocks have potential applications in many fields such as:

• Telecommunication - network synchronization, traffic bandwidth, GPS free navigation
• Geology - underground exploration, monitoring of water tables or ice sheets
• Astronomy - low-frequency gravitational wave detection, radio telescope synchronization

Partners

6 research institutes

• University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
• University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
• Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland
• Niels Bohr Institute (NBI), Denmark
• Vienna University of Technology, Austria
• University of Innsbruck, Austria

6 Companies

• Teledyne e2V, United Kingdom
• Toptica Photonics, Germany
• NKT Photonics, United Kingdom
• Acktar, Israel
• Chronos Technology Ltd, United Kingdom
• British Telecom, United Kingdom

Tasks

The iqClock project is broken down into 4 tasks, each advancing a particular optical clock technology.

Task 1 - Integrated optical lattice clock

Constructing a compact, transportable Strontium optical lattice clock.

Task 2: kHz-line superradiant clock

Demonstrating the cavity-enhanced atom-light coupling can lead to more compact and robust clocks using superradiant emissions.

Task 3: mHz-line superradiant frequency standard

Operating a superradiant clock continuously on a mHz-linewidth clock transition.

Task 4: Superradiant laser foundations

Exploring the foundations of superradiant lasers, the behavior of an ensemble of atoms coupled to a cavity.

Publications

Superradiant Cooling, Trapping and Lasing of Dipole-Interacting Clock Atoms, Christoph Hotter, David Plankensteiner, Laurin Ostermann and Helmut Ritsch. Optics Express Vol. 27, Issue 22, pp. 31193-31206 (2019). [arXiv: 1906.01945]

Continuous guided strontium beam with high phase-space density, Chun-Chia Chen, Shayne Bennetts, Rodrigo González Escudero, Benjamin Pasquiou and Florian Schreck. Phys. Rev. Applied 12, 044014 (2019). [arXiv: 1907.02793]

Sisyphus optical lattice decelerator, Chun-Chia Chen, Shayne Bennetts, Rodrigo González Escudero, Florian Schreck, and Benjamin Pasquiou. Phys. Rev. A 100, 023401 (2019). [arXiv: 1810.07157]