Setup of a Transportable Yb Optical Lattice Clock

In this thesis, a transportable setup of an Yb atomic source for a lattice optical clock is built and characterized. All three laser setups for cooling and trapping the Yb atoms, together with the vacuum system, are contained on a transportable optical table. The preparation of the atomic sample before doing spectroscopy on the clock transition starts by slowing the atoms in the Zeeman slower. This is followed by trapping the atoms in the pre-cooling and the post-cooling MOTs, before loading the atoms into the optical lattice. Slowing and pre-cooling the atoms is done using the strong transition at 399 nm. This cools the atoms down to around a mK. To successfully load the atoms in the optical lattice, we have to cool the atoms further to beyond 50 μK. This is done by exciting the weak transition at 556 nm. The atoms that are transferred into the post-cooling stage are cooled down to a few tens of μK. The atoms are then ready to be loaded into the optical lattice at the magic wavelength. The amplified laser light at 760 nm inside the 1-D intra-vacuum cavity results in a lattice trapping potential of approximately 50 μK. A transfer efficiency, from the MOT into the optical lattice, of more than 25% was measured. The spectroscopy on the clock transition was done for 171Yb. A step-by-step mechanism was adopted, starting by exciting the forbidden transition at 578 nm inside the post-cooling stage MOT, by using the ”chopped-MOT” method. The 300 kHz Doppler-broadened line is then narrowed down to 3 kHz by switching on the light at 760 nm, while keeping the MOT on. The so-called ”chopped-lattice” technique helped suppress the Doppler-broadening; however the other effects due to the light and the magnetic fields of the MOT were still present. By switching off the MOT’s light and magnetic fields, the Yb atoms are completely trapped in the optical lattice. As a result, the FWHM of the spectroscopy line was reduced by a factor of 10.