Systèmes pour revêtement de cellules à alcalins pour horloges atomiques

Titre du projet

Description

This request concerns the acquisition of a new facility to produce wall-coated alkali-atom (typically Rubidium or Cesium) vapour cells for high performance and miniature atomic clocks. These wall-coated atomic vapour cells will constitute a key element of our research on atom-light and atom-microwave interactions in such vapour cells, and will finally lead to a new generation of compact but still relatively high performance frequency standards to be used in space (GALILEO satellite navigation system) and on ground (in particular for secure telecommunications). The new facility will be used in several on-going research lines of UniNe-LTF as well as for other projects. For instance, we will study the main atom-light interactions in wall-coated cells of relevance for atomic clocks. In particular, the atomic relaxation processes and their underlying physical phenomena will be studied, using optical-microwave double resonance, coherent population trapping (CPT) spectroscopy, and relaxation-time measurement methods. Another research line concerns the development of next generation space atomic clocks and includes studies on novel clock schemes and wall-coated cells that have the potential to provide high-quality clock signals, making possible next-generation Rb atomic clocks with improved frequency stability.Coherent Population Trapping resonances represent an alternative to the optical-microwave double resonance for realizing compact and high performance secondary frequency standard. The use of CPT-resonances for clock applications has been recently proposed. This project is also devoted to the study of the perspectives and the limits of this approach. In particular we want to test the performances of a clock based on CPT-resonance prepared in wall coated cell.Recently we have started a research activity on micro-fabricated atomic clocks. One of the goals of this study is to answer the following question: what are the fundamental limits to linewidth and signal-to-noise ratio from a millimetre-scale vapour cell? To answer this question we need to micro-fabricate mm-scale vapour cells with novel wall-coatings and/or precise buffer-gas pressures. This fabrication technology will play a key role in the research program and will greatly benefit from the requested equipment. Wall-coated cells produced with the requested equipment will also allow to enrich and widen the scientific collaboration with Swiss and international partners: Uni-Fribourg, IEN Sofia, SPE-St.-Petersburg, NIST, St-Petersburg University and RIRT, Uni Franche-Comté, EPFL, CSEM, Uni Graz, Uni Belgrade, etc.

Chercheur principal

Mileti, Gaetano

Schori, Christian

Affolderbach, Christoph

Statut

Completed

Date de début

1 Juin 2010

Date de fin

31 Janvier 2012

Chercheurs

Breschi, Evelina