We carried out a 26-day comparison of five simultaneously operated optical clocks and six atomic fountain clocks located at INRIM, LNE-SYRTE, NPL and PTB by using two satellite-based frequency comparison techniques: broadband Two-Way Satellite Time and Frequency Transfer (TWSTFT) and Global Positioning System Precise Point Positioning (GPS PPP). With an enhanced statistical analysis procedure taking into account correlations and gaps in the measurement data, combined overall uncertainties in the range of 1.8 x 10(-16)to 3.5 x 10(-16)for the optical clock comparisons were found. The comparison of the fountain clocks yields results with a maximum relative frequency difference of 6.9 x 10(-16), and combined overall uncertainties in the range of 4.8 x 10(-16)to 7.7 x 10(-16).

Optical lattice clocks are at the forefront of frequency metrology. Both the instability and systematic uncertainty of these clocks have been reported to be two orders of magnitude smaller than the best microwave clocks. For this reason, a redefinition of the SI second based on optical clocks seems possible in the near future. However, the operation of optical lattice clocks has not yet reached the reliability that microwave clocks have achieved so far. In this paper, we report on the operation of a strontium optical lattice clock that spans several weeks, with more than 80% uptime. We make use of this long integration time to demonstrate a reproducible measurement of frequency ratios between the strontium clock transition and microwave Cs primary and Rb secondary frequency standards.

Leveraging the unrivalled performance of optical clocks as key tools for geo-science, for astronomy and for fundamental physics beyond the standard model requires comparing the frequency of distant optical clocks faithfully. Here, we report on the comparison and agreement of two strontium optical clocks at an uncertainty of 5 × 10 −17 via a newly established phase-coherent frequency link connecting Paris and Braunschweig using 1,415 km of telecom fibre. The remote comparison is limited only by the instability and uncertainty of the strontium lattice clocks themselves, with negligible contributions from the optical frequency transfer. A fractional precision of 3 × 10 −17 is reached after only 1,000 s averaging time, which is already 10 times better and more than four orders of magnitude faster than any previous long-distance clock comparison. The capability of performing high resolution international clock comparisons paves the way for a redefinition of the unit of time and an all-optical dissemination of the SI-second.

In this paper, we propose an in-depth review of the vector and tensor polarizabilities of the two energy levels of the 87Sr clock transition whose measurement was reported in [P. G. Westergaard et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 210801 (2011)]. We conduct a theoretical calculation that reproduces the measured coefficients. In addition, we detail the experimental conditions used for their measurement in two Sr optical lattice clocks, and exhibit the quadratic behaviour of the vector and tensor shifts with the depth of the trapping potential and evaluate their impact on the accuracy of the clock.

In optical lattice clocks, a large number of neutral atoms confined in an optical lattice are probed by a narrow linewidth laser. These clocks combine an excellent control of the systematic effects, while offering a record stability thanks to the large number of interrogated atoms. Here, we report on recent results obtained with two strontium optical lattice clocks at LNE-SYRTE, Observatoire de Paris.

We present a comprehensive set of high resolution comparisons between strontium optical lattice clocks in agreement at the 10−16 level and three microwave cesium fountains. The microwave to optical comparison reaches a total uncertainty of 3.1×10−16.