| Microwave atomic clocks are based on the intrinsic hyperfine energy interval in the ground state of an atom. In the presence of an oscillating electric field, the atomic system---namely, the hyperfine interval---becomes perturbed (the ac Stark effect). For the atomic sample in a clock, such a perturbation leads to an undesired shift in the clock frequency and, ultimately, to an inaccuracy in the measurement of time. Here a consistent perturbation formalism is presented for the theory of the ac Stark effect on the atomic hyperfine structure. By further implementing relativistic atomic many-body theory, this formalism is then utilized for two specific microwave atomic clock applications: a high-accuracy calculation of the blackbody radiation shift in the 133Cs primary frequency standard and a proposal for microwave clocks based on atoms in an engineered optical lattice. |
