28
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Real-time geopotentiometry with synchronously linked optical lattice clocks

      Preprint

      Read this article at

          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          According to the Einstein's theory of relativity, the passage of time changes in a gravitational field. On earth, raising a clock by one centimetre increases its tick rate by 1.1 parts in 10\(^{18}\), enabling optical clocks to perform precision geodesy. Here, we demonstrate geopotentiometry by determining the height difference of master and slave clocks separated by 15 km with uncertainty of 5 cm. The subharmonic of the master clock is delivered through a telecom fibre to phase-lock and synchronously interrogate the slave clock. This protocol rejects laser noise in the comparison of two clocks, which improves the stability of measuring the gravitational red shift. Such phase-coherently operated clocks facilitate proposals for linking clocks and interferometers. Over half a year, 11 measurements determine the fractional frequency difference between the two clocks to be \(1,652.9(5.9)\times 10^{-18}\), or a height difference of 1,516(5) cm, consistent with an independent measurement by levelling and gravimetry. Our system is as a building block of an internet of clocks, consisting of a master and a number of slave clocks, which will provide "quantum benchmarks" that are height references with dynamic response.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          10.1038/nphoton.2016.159
          1608.07650
          http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

          Comments

          Comment on this article