Postdoc on Continuous Optical Clocks

Postdoc on Continuous Optical Clocks

UvA - University of Amsterdam

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Are you eager to push optical atomic clocks to new levels in a lively, international research group? Do you enjoy creating complex machines that have never existed before? Do you want to explore physics that nobody else has seen? If yes, then you might want to join the Ultracold Strontium Group at the Institute of Physics as a postdoc on our exciting journey towards superradiant and zero-deadtime clocks.

Join Us!

Optical clocks have reached a precision of better than 10-18, which enables them to resolve the relativistic time dilation by only 1cm height difference in the gravitational field of earth. They are useful for searches of physics beyond the standard model, exploration of many-body physics, and societal applications, such as navigation. So far, clocks operate in a pulsed manner, preparing a sample of ultracold atoms and then interrogating that sample. Reaching the ultimate precision needs averaging of 10 thousand samples, taking several hours.

You will join a team building clocks that will overcome this limitation, effectively interrogating the atomic sample continuously. This enables reaching the ultimate precision already after just a few minutes, which is useful for many applications. We want to achieve this by creating clocks that can operate truly continuously, using technology that we have developed to achieve continuous Bose-Einstein condensation [Nature 606, 683 (2022)]. We are building two types of such clocks: a superradiant clock and a zero-deadtime clock. A superradiant clock is a laser that lases on an ultranarrow optical transition. You can read about our plans for this clock in Sheng Zhou’s PhD thesis. For the zero-deadtime clock, we supply atoms from a continuous ultracold Sr source to four clock interrogation zones that are in one vacuum chamber. Clock interrogation can always be executed in at least one zone, while others are reloaded with atoms, enabling continuous operation. With this postdoc position you can contribute to both efforts.

This is what you will do

You will join a team of several PhD students and potentially other postdocs to further develop our continuous optical clocks. This includes experimental work with the clocks, such as debugging and data taking, designing and constructing upgrades to the machines, data analysis, literature research, article writing, and contributing to the acquisition of funding. We ask you to become independent by taking initiatives and developing your own creative ideas. You will also take an active role in group activities, such as master and PhD student education, presentation of your work, maintenance of lab organization, and societal and stakeholder outreach.

What we ask of you

We are looking for someone who is excited about pushing novel types of ultracold atom experiments to new reals of AMO physics. You also should have:

• a recent PhD in experimental ultracold atom or trapped ion physics;
• great team working skills;
• initiative and good time management skills;
• good communication skills in oral and written English.