Speaker
Description
As Thorium nuclear spectroscopy progresses, it promises to be a unique and powerful quantum senor of the strong nuclear force. In an analogy, once clock errors arising from electromagnetism are understood and quantified, an optical lattice clock may be used as a sensor to measure effects arising from gravity. One application is relativistic geodesy, where earth’s geoid can be mapped via relativistic red-shift of the clock frequency. Here, we present efforts at NIST to develop a transportable optical lattice clock capable of state-of-the-art relativistic geodesy. We will summarize systematic clock uncertainties and the stability of the transportable clock laser system. We will conclude with a brief description of a preliminary measurement campaign to measure clock frequency offsets between a laboratory clock in Boulder CO and a remote clock transported to the summit of a 4300 m mountain.
