A Fermi-degenerate three-dimensional optical lattice clock

Abstract

Strontium optical lattice clocks have the potential to simultaneously interrogate millions of atoms with a high spectroscopic quality factor of $4 \times 10^{-17}$. Previously, atomic interactions have forced a compromise between clock stability, which benefits from a large atom number, and accuracy, which suffers from density-dependent frequency shifts. Here, we demonstrate a scalable solution which takes advantage of the high, correlated density of a degenerate Fermi gas in a three-dimensional optical lattice to guard against on-site interaction shifts. We show that contact interactions are resolved so that their contribution to clock shifts is orders of magnitude lower than in previous experiments. A synchronous clock comparison between two regions of the 3D lattice yields a $5 \times 10^{-19}$ measurement precision in 1 hour of averaging time.