MG15 - Talk detail

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Optical clocks based on different atoms and ions are now reported with systematic uncertainties in the low 1E-18 range, and experiments based on frequency comparisons and measurements of frequency ratios allow for improved tests of fundamental physics, especially quantitative tests of relativity and searches for violations of the equivalence principle. The 171Yb+ optical clock that is based on the extremely narrow S-F electric octupole transition possesses a favorable combination of small systematic uncertainty and high sensitivity for such tests because of the strongly relativistic character of the excited state. In comparisons of two 171Yb+ single-ion clocks, a 87Sr optical lattice clock and primary Cs clocks at PTB we perform tests for temporal variations of the fine structure constant and for violations of local Lorentz invariance. A future nuclear clock based on the low-energy transition in Th-229 may significantly increase the sensitivity of such tests. Recent results on the nuclear moments of the Th-229 isomer provide first experimental indications on the sensitivity of the transition frequency to the value of alpha.

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