Microfabricated atomic clocks and magnetometers

Abstract

We describe recent research at NIST directed towards the development of microfabricated atomic clocks and magnetometers based on coherent population trapping spectroscopy. Clock physics packages based on the D1 transition in 87Rb achieve a fractional frequency instability below 4 × 10-11/τ1/2 [Knappe et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 1460 (2004)], while the sensitivity of the magnetic sensor reached 50 pT Hz -1/2 at 10 Hz [Schwindt et al. Appl. Phys, Lett. 85, 6509 (2004)]. With volumes around 10 mm3 and power consumptions below 150 mW they display an improvement over the previous state of the art by a factor of 100 in volume and a factor of 10 in power dissipation.