Optical Atomic Clock Interrogation Via an Integrated Spiral Cavity Laser

Optical atomic clocks have demonstrated revolutionary advances in precision timekeeping, but their applicability to the real world is critically dependent on whether such clocks can operate outside a laboratory setting. The challenge to clock portability stems from the many obstacles not only in miniaturizing the underlying components of the clock - namely the ultrastable laser, the frequency comb, and the atomic reference itself - but also in making the clock resilient to environmental fluctuations. Photonic integration offers one compelling solution to simultaneously address the problems of miniaturization and ruggedization, but brings with it a new set of challenges in recreating the functionality of an optical clock using chip-scale building blocks. The clock laser used for atom interrogation is one particular point of uncertainty, as the performance of the meticulously-engineered bulk-cavity stabilized lasers would be exceptionally difficult to transfer to chip. Here we demonstrate that a chip-integrated ultrahigh quality factor (Q) spiral cavity, when interfaced with a 1348 nm seed laser, reaches a fractional frequency instability of 7.5 × 10^-14, meeting the stability requirements for interrogating the narrow-linewidth transition of ^88Sr^+ upon frequency doubling to 674 nm. In addition to achieving the record for laser stability on chip, we use this laser to showcase the operation of a Sr-ion clock with short-term instability averaging down as 3.9 × 10^-14 / √(τ), where τ is the averaging time. Our demonstration of an optical atomic clock interrogated by an integrated spiral cavity laser opens the door for future advanced clock systems to be entirely constructed using lightweight, portable, and mass-manufacturable integrated optics and electronics.