Two electrons are better than one... In the Yb lab we produce Bose-Einstein condensates and degenerate Fermi gases of ytterbium atoms. These atoms offer metastable electronic states, ultranarrow clock transitions, multicomponent fermions with SU(N) interactions: a whole range of experimental tools that allow new possibilities for quantum simulation and quantum information processing.

Dissemination of frequency standards beyond the GPS level

Global Positioning System (GPS) dissemination of frequency standards is ubiquitous at present, providing the most widespread time and frequency reference for the majority of industrial and research applications worldwide. On the other hand, the ultimate limits of the GPS presently curb further advances in high-precision, scientific and industrial applications relying on this dissemination scheme. Here, we demonstrate that these limits can be reliably overcome even in laboratories without a local atomic clock by replacing the GPS with a 642-km-long optical fiber link to a remote primary caesium frequency standard. Through this configuration we stably address the 1S03P0 clock transition in an ultracold gas of 173Yb, with a precision that exceeds the possibilities of a GPS-based measurement, dismissing the need for a local clock infrastructure to perform beyond-GPS high-precision tasks. We also report an improvement of two orders of magnitude in the accuracy on the transition frequency reported in literature.

C. Clivati et al.,
Measuring absolute frequencies beyond the GPS limit via long-haul optical frequency dissemination
Opt. Express 24, 11865 (2016)

Yb people

Giammarco Masini
Master Student
Tianwei Zhou
PostDoc
Jacopo Parravicini
Research Fellow
Giacomo Cappellini
Scientific Staff
Jacopo Catani
Scientific Staff
Massimo Inguscio
Scientific Staff
Leonardo Fallani
Scientific staff
Former members:
Rafael Emilio Barfknecht
Daniel Benedicto Orenes
Lorenzo Franchi
Giovanni Giusfredi
Jonathan T. Green
Lorenzo Livi
Pietro Lombardi
Marco Mancini
Pablo Cancio Pastor
Guido Pagano
Florian Schäfer
Carlo Sias
Daniele Tusi

Yb contacts

For further information, request of material, job opportunities, please contact:

Leonardo Fallani
(fallani@lens.unifi.it)

Yb funding

ERC CoG TOPSIM
QUANTERA QTFLAG
INFN FISh