Laser Cooling Alkaline-earth Atoms for Optical Clock in Chinese Space Station

This study presents an achievement of laser cooling of alkaline-earth atoms in the Chinese Space Station’s strontium (Sr) atomic space optical clock. The system’s core components, physical unit, optical unit, and electrical unit, have a total volume of 306 L and a total mass of 163.8 kg. These compact and robust units can overcome mechanical vibrations and temperature fluctuations during space launch. The laser sources of the optical unit are composed of diode lasers, and the injection locking of slave lasers is automatically performed by a program. In the experiment, a blue magneto-optical trap of cold atoms was achieved, with the atom numbers estimated to be approximately (1.50 ± 0.13) × 10⁶ for ⁸⁷Sr and (8.00 ± 0.56) × 10⁶ for ⁸⁸Sr. This work establishes a foundation for atomic confinement and high-precision interrogation in space-based optical clocks and expands the frontiers of cold atom physics in microgravity.