Progress on a 171Yb-Based Active Optical Atomic Clock
SummaryWe present our progress on the construction of a <sup>171</sup>Yb-based active optical atomic clock. The ytterbium (Yb) atoms, initially in a collimated thermal beam generated in an oven, are decelerated using a Zeeman slower to the capture velocity (~ 10 ms<sup>-1</sup>) for a magneto-optical trap on the <sup>1</sup>S<inf>0</inf> → <sup>3</sup>P<inf>1</inf> transition at 556 nm. This allows us to generate an ensemble of N >10<sup>6</sup> atoms at temperatures below 100 μK, which will be transported using an optical conveyor belt to an ultra-stable (σ<inf>y</inf> ~ 10<sup>-13</sup>) cavity of finesse on the order of 10<sup>4</sup>. Here, the atoms will be prepared in order to generate a superradiant emission which will serve as the frequency reference on the <sup>1</sup>S<inf>0</inf> → <sup>3</sup>P<inf>0</inf> clock transition in <sup>171</sup>Yb.