We present NPL’s recent contributions to timekeeping applications of optical clocks. The first of these in-volves optical clocks at NPL and SYRTE being simultaneously used to steer experimental time scales, in a similar manner to Cs fountains steering the national time scales. The resulting optically-steered time scales at NPL and SYRTE (denoted UTCx(NPL) and UTCx(OP) respectively) will be presented along with compari-sons against both Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and each other via satellite techniques.
We will then present how optical clocks can be used in the evaluation and steering of International Atomic Time (TAI) and, subsequently, UTC – a feat which has recently been achieved by NPL’s Sr lattice optical clock. We will discuss the process by which this was achieved, and we will show the recent frequency data and analysis that has been used to perform recent calibrations of TAI.
We present work on versatile, compact optical components for waveguided atom interferometry with rotation sensing in mind. These diffractive optical elements: static Fresnel zone plates (FZPs), paired with a dynamic spatial light modulator, expand on the previous design and construction in our group of FZPs for smooth, red-detuned optical waveguides, allowing a wider range of functionality such as dark trapping with blue-detuned light and the generation of multiple, distinct waveguides from single FZPs. Our experiment utilises Bose-Einstein condensates of Rb-87 for interferometry, currently in a free-space configuration, by introducing such waveguides we can reduce the scale of this apparatus while increasing sensitivity to rotation.
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