Michael Bishof
University of Colorado at Boulder
The second generation JILA 87Sr optical lattice clock recently demonstrated both the lowest systematic uncertainty and frequency instability of any clock. This achievement stands on the shoulders of recent breakthroughs in atomic, optical, and quantum physics. In this talk, I will describe the work that culminated in strontium's clock crown. Along the way, we were also able to demonstrate a detailed understanding of strongly interacting quantum many-body systems and confirm the high degree of symmetry present in the full hyperfine manifold of strontium clock states. This work serves as the basis for future experiments using strontium to explore spin-orbit coupling, dipolar interactions, cavity quantum electrodynamics, quantum simulation, and, yes, even better clocks.