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# On The Origin of Hi in Galaxies: Photodissociation and the “Schmidt Law” for Global Star Formation

## 1. Introduction

Discussions on the subject of global star formation in galaxies (e.g. Kennicutt 1989, 1997, 1998; Martin & Kennicutt 2001) are usually based on observed correlations between measures of the gas surface density in galaxy disks and the star formation rate. An example of such a correlation diagram is shown in Figure 1a (left panel), which plots on the X-axis the mean surface brightness in the 21-cm line of Hi for a sample of local-universe galaxies, and on the Y-axis the corresponding observed mean surface brightness at $`\lambda =1500`$Å taken from one of the first extensive surveys of nearby galaxies in the Far-UV (the FAUST survey, Deharveng et al. 1994). Similar correlations appear if the data on the Y-axis is the mean H$`\alpha `$ surface brightness of the galaxy, or if a measure of the contribution from molecular gas (from CO(1-0) millimeter line observations) is included on the X-axis (although this latter “correction” generally does not improve the degree of correlation, as was first noted by Deharveng et al.).

## 2. Cause, Effect, and the “Schmidt Law”

The conventional approach is to parametrize plots such as that shown in Figure 1a as a power law, following a suggestion by Schmidt (1959) who assumed that the volume density of young stars formed per unit time in the Galactic disk is proportional to some power of the local gas volume density. The same parametrization is usually assumed to apply to the observed surface densities in nearby galaxies (Kennicutt 1989). Many authors have taken up the challenge to determine the power law index for a variety of data sets and, some 38 years after Schmidt’s seminal paper, Kennicutt (1997) reported an accumulation of $`50`$ papers dealing with the specific index appropriate for the “Schmidt Law” in nearby galaxies. The existence of such correlations is widely assumed to be strong evidence that the original assumption by Schmidt is valid.

Inherent in nearly all discussions of this topic to date is another assumption, namely, that the quantity plotted on X-axis of Figure 1a is the cause, and the quantity plotted on the Y-axis is the effect. However, the mere existence of a correlation does not, of course, tell us which quantity is the cause and which is the effect; it only tells us that the two quantities are related. Some other assumptions are required to guide us in this matter; Schmidt’s assumption provides this guide. It is against this backdrop that many papers have been published discussing the global star formation rate in galaxies as a function of various other parameters (galaxy type, galactocentric distance, etc.), and the current picture of global instability in galaxy disks has been proposed as the root cause of the star formation activity (Kennicutt 1989).

My purpose here is to point out that Figure 1 admits another explanation, one that is simple, and for which the physics is well understood. It is well known that Far-UV photons are capable of dissociating H2 molecules into Hi atoms in the ISM (Stecher & Williams 1967), and that this process creates Hi layers on the surfaces of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) (e.g. Andersson & Wannier 1993). The dissociating photons are in the energy range of a few eV below 13.6 eV and, since these photons are not energetic enough to ionize the Hi, they can travel over long distances in the ISM, eventually being absorbed by an H2 molecule or a dust grain, or escaping the galaxy. What has perhaps not been adequately appreciated up to now is that the morphological signatures of photodissociated Hi can be found on a wide range of scales from 1 pc to 1 kpc in the Galaxy and in nearby galaxies (Allen 2002).

Does this “PDR” explanation for Hi in the ISM extend to whole galaxies, and is the available flux of Far-UV photons from the typical spiral galaxy in the local universe quantitatively sufficient to produce the entire Hi content of the galaxy for a reasonable range of physical parameters?

## 3. An Alternative Explanation for the “Schmidt Law”

In Figure 1b, I have plotted the data from Deharveng et al. with the axes inverted. The solid curves are models of Hi production by photodissociation using the analytic solution developed by Sternberg (1988) (see also Madden et al. 1993, Smith et al. 2000) for an Hi area filling factor of 0.3 and for a typical range of GMC volume densities $`n=n_1+2n_2`$. It appears from these results that photodissociation is indeed capable of providing a simple explanation for the “Schmidt Law” in Figure 1a when we “invert” cause and effect, as in Figure 1b. It is also clear that the photodissociation picture can explain such correlations when the H$`\alpha `$ flux replaces the Far-UV.

A very rough, but direct, order-of-magnitude estimate can be done to confirm that the observed Far-UV flux provides enough photons to maintain the entire Hi content of the galaxy. Consider the case of NGC 4152, an Sc galaxy at D $`19.5`$ Mpc in Virgo. The FAUST Far-UV flux is $`6.3\times 10^{14}`$ ergs/cm2/s/Å integrated over the galaxy image (this galaxy is just over $`2^{}`$ in diameter, so the corresponding data point is roughly in the middle of Figure 1). Summing over wavelength from 900 - 1100 Å (and presuming the spectrum is flat from here to 1500 Å) the observed flux corresponds to about 1 photon/cm2/s at earth, or $`4\times 10^{52}`$ Far-UV photons/s at NGC 4152. What is the appropriate time scale? This will roughly be the reformation time scale on dust grains for the process 2Hi $``$ H2 on grains, $`t_{form}=(2nR_{form})^15\times 10^8/n`$ yr for the standard PDR model parameters of Kaufman et al. (1999). If we take a typical GMC volume density to be $`n_2550`$ H2 molecules cm-3, the reformation time is typically $`550\times 10^6`$ yr. The Hi production rate by photodissociation in NGC 4152 then accounts for:

$$2\times 0.15\times f_t\times 4\times 10^{52}\times 5(50)\times 10^6\times 3.15\times 10^7f_t\times 2(20)\times 10^{66}\mathrm{Hi}\mathrm{atoms};$$

where the factor 2 comes in because there are 2 Hi atoms produced by each Far-UV photon, the factor 0.15 is the dissociation probability (calculated from atomic physics and averaged over all UV absorptions, e.g. Draine & Bertoldi 1996), and $`f_t`$ is the fraction of the observed Far-UV flux which has been trapped in the galaxy and is effective in causing photodissociation.

NGC 4152 is observed to contain $`2\times 10^9`$ M of Hi (Huchtmeier & Richter 1989), or $`2.5\times 10^{66}`$ Hi atoms. If a typical value for $`f_t0.5`$, then at least 40%, and perhaps all, of the HI present could be accounted for by photodissociation! This result is surprising; a more complete discussion will be presented elsewhere.

## 4. Conclusions

Correlations of the kind shown in Figure 1 can arise naturally from the dissociating action of Far-UV photons reacting back on the GMCs from which the young stars were recently formed. Schmidt’s hypothesis therefore remains a reasonable, but unsubstantiated, point of departure for discussions of the formation of stars out of the interstellar gas.

### Acknowledgments.

I am grateful to Ben Waghorn for his help with the figures, and to Nino Panagia for discussions on photodissociation of H2 and comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

## References

Allen, R.J. 2002, in ASP Conf. Ser. (in press), The Dynamics, Structure, & History of Galaxies, eds. G.S. da Costa & E.M. Sadler (San Francisco: ASP)

Andersson, B.-G., & Wannier, P.G. 1993, ApJ, 402, 585

Deharveng, J.-M., Sasseen, T.P., Buat, V., Bowyer, S., Lampton, M., & Wu, X. 1994, A&A, 289, 715

Draine, B.T., & Bertoldi, F. 1996, ApJ, 468, 269

Huchtmeier, W.K., & Richter, O.-G. 1989, A General Catalog of Hi Observations of Galaxies (New York: Springer-Verlag)

Kaufman, M.J., Wolfire, M.G., Hollenbach, D., & Luhman, M.L. 1999, ApJ, 527, 795

Kennicutt, R.C. 1989, ApJ, 344, 685

Kennicutt, R.C. 1997, in The Interstellar Medium in Galaxies, ed. J.M. van der Hulst (Dordrecht: Kluwer), 171

Kennicutt, R.C. 1998, ApJ, 498, 541

Madden, S.C., Geis, N., Genzel, R., Herrmann, F., Jackson, J., Poglitsch, A., Stacey, G.J., & Townes, C.H. 1993, ApJ, 407, 579

Martin, C., & Kennicutt, R.C. 2001, ApJ, 555, 301

Schmidt, M. 1959, ApJ, 129, 243

Smith, D.A., Allen, R.J., Bohlin, R.C., Nicholson, N., & Stecher, T.P. 2000, ApJ, 538, 608

Stecher, T.P., & Williams, D.A. 1967, ApJ, 149, L29

Sternberg, A. 1988, ApJ, 332, 400


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# Financial multifractality and its subtleties: an example of DAX

## I Introduction

Comprising the financial time series into a unique description on different time scales by means of the multifractal formalism is an attractive perspective both for fundamental as well as for practical reasons . As a constructive, though also critical, contribution towards this aim in the present paper we systematically review the related basic characteristic of the financial time series using the large collection of the high-frequency Deutsche Aktienindex (DAX) data with over $`10^6`$ data records within the time period 28. Nov 1997 $`÷`$ 30. Dec 1999 , as well as the daily data since 29. Sep 1959 $`÷`$ 4. Sep 2001  (over $`10^4`$ data points). We thus estimate the tail index for the distribution of DAX returns, the Renyi exponents for the DAX index and return’s graphs, as well as the corresponding generalized Hurst exponents. It should be stressed that contrary to all the previous related studies the fractal exponents for the graphs are here computed directly, using the (2–dimensional) box counting algorithm, independently of the Hurst exponent computations.

Let $`S(t)`$ represent an index value as a function of time. The rate of return within the time lag $`\tau `$ (the return time) is usually defined as

$$G_\tau ^{}(t)=\frac{S(t+\tau )S(t)}{S(t)}.$$
(1)
The logarithmic returns

$$G_\tau (t)=\mathrm{ln}S(t+\tau )\mathrm{ln}S(t)=\mathrm{ln}\left(1+G_\tau ^{}(t)\right)G_\tau ^{}(t)$$
(2)
are more often used when analyzing the financial time series. They are additive with respect to the return time,

$$G_{\tau _1}(t)+G_{\tau _2}(t+\tau _1)=G_{\tau _1+\tau _2}(t).$$
(3)
This implies translational symmetry of returns and scaling invariance of the asset price (return is identical for prices in any currency). The logarithmic returns are indistinguishable from normal returns if $`|G_\tau ^{}(t)|1`$. In general, the normal returns (1) are slightly bigger in absolute value which leads to fatter tails due to the inequality $`x>\mathrm{ln}(1+x)`$ for $`x(0,1)`$. Simple index differences have also been investigated but they are dimensional quantities . Throughout this paper by the index $`x_t`$ at time $`t`$ we will understand the logarithm of its value, $`x_t=\mathrm{ln}S_t`$. Hence, the returns $`G_\tau `$ are increments of the index $`x_t`$, just as the white noise (WN) random variables are increments of the Brownian random walk (BRW). The index $`x_t`$ can be viewed as integrated returns

$$x_{(t_2+1)\tau }=x_{t_1\tau }+\underset{k=t_1}{\overset{t_2}{}}G_\tau (k\tau ),$$
(4)
where $`x_{t_1\tau }`$ is the integration constant. To compare various returns the normalized returns are introduced that have zero average and unit variance

$$g_\tau (t)=\frac{G_\tau (t)G_\tau (t)_t}{\sigma (G_\tau (t))},$$
(5)
where $`\mathrm{}_t`$ denotes averaging over time variable and $`\sigma (\mathrm{})`$ is the standard deviation.

In the following section the probability density function (pdf) of the DAX returns is discussed in order to demonstrate that it shares essentially all the global characteristics identified so far in the literature for other indices, though some small quantitative differences do of course take place. Section III is devoted to study self similarity of the DAX index and of its returns using the (2–dimensional) box counting algorithm. The generalized Hurst exponents are analyzed in Sec. IV. Summary and conclusions are given in the last section.

## II Distribution of returns

The basic property of normalized returns that has been intensively investigated in recent years is their pdf (obtained by constructing histograms from the empirical data). The old assumption that returns follow the uncorrelated BRW with independent identically distributed (iid) Gaussian random variables  has been challenged by Mandelbrot and by Fama . Mandelbrot analyzed a relatively short (about 2000 data points) time series of cotton prices and he reached conclusion that returns have Lévy stable symmetric distribution with Pareto (power like) fat tails .

This result has been refined in recent years by the Boston group  using over $`10^6`$ high frequency data points of the S$`\&`$P500 index. They have found clear departures from the Lévy stable distribution. First, suggesting the exponential truncation of fat tails for returns $`>6\sigma `$, where $`\sigma `$ is the standard deviation. Later, they found a power law fit with the tail index exceeding the Lévy distribution . The last result was confirmed by other groups for distributions of returns of other indices, including the FOREX data .

In this Section we investigate histograms of the DAX returns for high and mid–frequency data. In Fig. 1 we plot the minutely data histogram ($`\tau =1`$ min.) for normalized returns (5). The normalized Gaussian distribution (dotted line) as well as the best fit for the Lévy stable distribution (dashed line) are also plotted. It is clear that the high frequency returns are neither Gaussian nor Lévy stable. The best fit for Lévy distribution within the central region $`g[g_I;+g_I]`$, with $`g_I5`$ gives for the Lévy parameters $`\alpha =1.16`$ and $`\gamma =0.286`$. It is interesting to notice that this fit is very stable with respect to the range of the variable $`g`$: one gets identical results within about 1% for $`g_I=1,3`$ and $`10`$. The tail index ($`\alpha `$) obtained in this way is too small to fit well for $`g>2`$. Also, it is smaller than the value 1.4 for S&P500 reported in .

Here, one should notice one exception: the central bin contains abundant number of data points (and it was not taken into account for the fits). This phenomenon we call the zero return enhancement and it is typical for high frequency data, especially for single stocks, indices that do not contain too many stocks and for not too large stock markets. For short time lags it happens that there are no transactions, the index value is constant and the return distribution is enhanced for the single return value $`g=0`$. For $`15`$ sec. DAX returns this effects gives about factor 2 enhancement for the central bin and still considerable enhancement for $`\tau =1`$ min. However, for much larger S&P500 index (and larger NY stock market) this effect is hardly visible even for minutely data. Because of this effect and discreteness of returns, we prefer the least square fit adopted for Lévy distribution  within the central region of the histogram, with the zero return bin neglected, instead of using the scaling form of the return probability $`p(0)`$ (see also  and Sec. IVA in ).

The log–log plot corresponding to Fig. 1 is given in Fig. 5(A). For comparison the dashed line with slope corresponding to the tail index $`\alpha =2.4`$ is also plotted. We can see that both, negative and positive returns give approximately the same tail index close to the value given above. This value considerably exceeds the range of the Lévy stable distributions. Our estimates give $`\alpha 2.5`$, in particular $`\alpha =2.4`$ for positive and $`\alpha =2.6`$ for negative returns. Here, one can observe an effect that is reverse to what was found in other markets: the negative return tail has over 8% bigger exponent than the positive tail. Quality of the linear fit for the $`n`$ data points with coordinates $`(x_i,y_i)`$ is usually measured by the linear correlation coefficient $`r`$ (also known as the Pearson’s $`r`$), where $`r1,+1`$. For $`r=1`$ the fit is of course perfect. Here, in both cases the correlation coefficient $`r>0.996`$ within the range $`2<g<20`$. The resulting tail index, $`\alpha `$, is considerably below the S&P500 result ($`\alpha 2.8`$), reported in  (though, in both cases well above the Lévy stable limit $`\alpha =2`$). In practical terms the DAX develops somewhat fatter tails which reflects its more sizable fluctuations (more ”rare events”).

For $`g>20`$ (or $`\mathrm{log}_2g4.5`$) the bins of the histogram contain very few data points ($`0÷3`$ for reasonable bin width that is $`0.1`$ for Fig. 5(A)) and any regression for those rare events is rather doubtful. Hence, any fit for the very far tail ($`g>20`$) truncation seems to be not well justified even for the largest sets of the high frequency data available today. The same results have been also obtained for $`\tau =15`$ sec. In summary, the high frequency DAX return distribution appears to be quite complicated consisting of the zero return enhancement in bin with $`g=0`$, Lévy like distribution in the central region ($`|g|2`$) with $`\alpha 1.3`$, inverse power like behavior with $`\alpha 2.4`$ for the tail ($`2<g<20`$) and not easily quantifable behavior for very large events ($`g>20`$).

The above picture, with two different $`\alpha `$’s for the central region and the tail, seems to be consistent with recent suggestions that the return distribution is a union of different distributions for returns in ”normal” day time and ”rush hours”, like soon after opening, before closing and at 14:30 in Europe . In this paper we however do not extract special subsets of our financial time series that would screen out such effects as they constitute an essential element of the stock market dynamics. Doing so would also shrink the data set which even as a whole seems to be of relatively modest size (see e.g. ). Furthermore, in addition to trends in the special subsets mentioned above there exist some other trends on various time-scales which are not connected with the calendar time but are associated with the internal market dynamics (bubbles and crashes, see  for a recent discussion). Hence, throughout this paper we analyze the complete DAX data set available.

Increase in the return time, $`\tau `$, leads to the increase of the parameter $`\alpha `$ of the fitted Lévy curve. In Figs.2,3 and Figs.5(B,C) the same plots as in Figs.1,5(A) are displayed but for return times $`\tau =10`$ min. and $`\tau =1`$ hour, respectively. In both cases we have good fit of the Lévy distribution in the central region, $`g(g_I,+g_I)`$, $`g_I3`$. The Lévy parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`\gamma `$ slowly grow from the values $`\alpha 1.2`$ and $`\gamma 0.29`$ for the minutely returns up to $`\alpha 1.4`$ and $`\gamma 0.39`$ for the hourly returns (see Figs. 1,2,3). At the same time the tail index outside the central region grows from $`\alpha =2.4`$ for the minutely returns up to $`\alpha 3.5`$ for hourly returns (see Figs. 5(A–C)).

For return times longer than $`\tau =60`$ min. the number of data points is decreasing below $`10^3`$ which is not sufficient to precisely estimate the tail behavior. Hence, for mid–frequency data we use much longer data set  with historical daily data to have reasonably long time series ($`>10^3`$). The return time here, $`\tau 500`$ min., is over 3 orders of magnitude longer than for the shortest available ($`\tau =15`$ sec.) data. Again, the central region where the histogram can be well approximated by a Lévy stable distribution is: $`|g|<g_I3`$. The best fit for the Lévy parameters in this region (also, quite stable with respect of the changes in $`g_I`$) is: $`\alpha 1.7`$ and $`\gamma 0.385`$ (see Fig. 4). In the lower panel, we have added 40–fold magnified tail to show that even for the largest available set of data the tail behavior cannot be reasonably estimated already for $`g>5`$. For longer return times the situation is even worse. For $`\tau =30`$ min. the tail index seems to be stabilized at the hourly return value $`\alpha 3.5`$ (Fig. 5(D)). In all cases it is greater than the maximum value allowed for the Lévy stable distributions ($`\alpha <2.0`$), in agreement with what was found for other indices.

Good fit of the Lévy stable distribution within the central region is consistent with the old result obtained by Mandelbrot for a data set of quite modest size . However, change of the Lévy parameters with the return time ($`\tau `$), as well as differences in the value of the Lévy parameter $`\alpha `$ for the central region and for the tail in each case clearly shows the complexity of the return distributions and their incompatibility with a plain Lévy curve. Also, from lower panel of Fig. 4 one can see apparent difference in the tail behavior of the normalized return distributions and the normalized Gaussian distribution.

The behavior of rare events (i.e. for tail with normalized returns $`g>20`$) cannot be reasonably estimated for return times $`\tau >1`$ min., at least using the standard histogram building and fit method, due to the insufficient number of such events in the present day financial data available. Similarly as for the S$`\&`$P500 , even though on short time scales the DAX return distributions are clearly not Lévy stable, in the range from $`\tau =1/4`$ min. up to $`\tau =1`$ day we do not observe convergence of the pdf to the Gaussian (see Figs. 14).

For the standard (Lindeberg) version of the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) the random variables must be iid and the stochastic process must be stationary. This condition is not satisfied for financial time series where, in particular, various short as well as long range cycles are present. In particular, empirical data display clear nonstationarity as can be seen from the pattern of the recurrence plot that is given for 10 min. returns data series in Fig. 6. Here, the relation between closeness in time and in phase space is displayed using the Takens phase space reconstruction method. The embedding dimension is taken $`E=5`$, but its exact value is not important in this case as the recurrence plot is not sensitive with respect to this parameter. The normalized neighborhood size was set $`\epsilon =0.2`$, but similar structures were obtained for smaller $`\epsilon `$ (see e.g.  Sec. III and  for more details), as well as for the embedding dimension up to $`E=9`$. Recently, Bouchaud et al  have shown that for a special model with correlations similar as in financial series a slow convergence to the Gaussian pdf can be proven and it is visible for return times $`\tau >1`$ day (see also ).

## III Self similarity

Distribution of returns gives us only a small part of the whole information included in the time series. In particular, the time order is completely neglected. To account for the time dependence one should analyze the whole (2–dimensional) graph of the functions $`x_t=x(t)`$ and $`g_\tau (t)`$ ($`D_G`$ in the notation of ). Although, the projections of the data points at the time and at the value axis are pseudofractal sets with zero Hausdorff–Besicovitch dimension and their pseudofractal scaling exponents are equal to one , the graph in principle can be a regular fractal as is the case for the WN and BRW. The fractal properties of returns have been suggested long ago by Mandelbrot . More detailed analysis has been published by Evertsz et al . However, it should be stressed that their analysis was based on the calculation of the generalized Hurst exponents (see Sec. IV).

To investigate fractal properties of DAX index and its returns we apply directly the standard box counting algorithm for computation of the Renyi box counting exponents defined by

$$d_q=\frac{1}{1q}\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{ln}\underset{i}{}p_i^q(N)}{\mathrm{ln}N}\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\mathrm{ln}Y(N)}{\mathrm{ln}N},$$
(6)
where $`N`$ is the total number of ”boxes” (bins), $`p_i`$ is the part of the ”mass” (i.e. fraction of all points) contained in the $`i`$-th box.

Computation is performed for both graphs, $`x(t)`$ and $`g_\tau (t)`$. To the best of our knowledge this is the first direct calculation of the fractal dimensions of the graphs for any financial index and its returns. Usually, the self similar properties were inferred from the Hurst exponents or from the rescale range analysis, see e.g. . As will be shown in the following sections these two methods give different results, especially for the returns’ graphs. In Fig. 7 results of the calculations of $`d_q`$ exponents are displayed for the logarithm of DAX ($`x_t`$). The calculations for time lags $`\tau =1,10,60`$ min., 1 day and for $`q=0.5,1,2`$ and $`4`$ are shown. In fact, the same results were obtained for the plain index ($`S_t`$). This supports the view that the graph is a real fractal, not just a pseudofractal as the exponents for fractals are invariant with respect to the homeomorphic transformations. In all cases one gets quite reasonable linear fits. The correlation parameter ($`r`$), as can be expected, is lowest for $`\tau =60`$ min, where the number of original data points is the smallest (below $`10^4`$). However, even in this case we have $`r>0.998`$ (for all other cases we have $`r>0.9994`$), quite a reasonable value. The linear scaling extends through $`6÷9`$ points (binary orders of magnitude) at the log–log plot which is also a standard range for numerical estimates of fractal dimensions. The resulting Renyi box counting exponents are given in Table I. Even though, the range of the return time ($`\tau `$) and the range of the index $`q`$ are relatively large, all values for the exponents $`d_q`$ are within the interval $`d_q[1.3,1.4]`$, well below the value characteristic for the BRW (in all Tables the last digit is not the significant digit). This suggests that we have a self similar and close to monofractal curve for the DAX index. In addition, one can observe a general tendency that the index $`d_q`$ is slowly decreasing for longer time lags except for $`\tau =1`$ day, where another set of data was used.

Similar analysis applied to the normalized DAX returns leads to the result displayed in Fig. 8. Here, the quality of the linear fit in the log–log plot is not as convincing as in the previous case (Fig. 7) of the index itself, especially for the smaller $`q`$-values. Extracting nevertheless the corresponding linear best fit $`(r>0.994)`$ coefficients results in the values for $`d_q`$ which are more dispersed and spread within the range $`d_q=1.4÷1.7`$, depending on $`q`$ as well as on the return time, $`\tau `$.

Our results thus indicate that, within a few percent, which is comparable to the estimated numerical accuracy, the $`q`$–dependence (and $`\tau `$–dependence) of $`d_q`$ is rather weak. Hence, the corresponding graphs can be viewed as close to monofractal and this indication is especially suggestive for the index whose scaling properties are quite convincing. It is also worth to notice that the corresponding $`d_q`$ values for the index are systematically below the BRW value (1.5). This may reflect an important element specific to the financial dynamics. Somewhat less transparent is the related scaling behavior of the returns, though this behavior also carries some information about the underlying dynamics and is therefore shown here. Assuming however that some scaling approximately applies in this case as well, it seems natural that the above estimated bounds limiting variation of $`d_q`$ for returns point to values which are systematically bigger than for the index, as the former is the differentiated index (see eq.(4)). While this difference equals $`0.5`$ for WN and BRW, in our case the difference is on average significantly smaller. To avoid numerical artifacts we have repeated all calculations with logarithm of the index and we have obtained the same results within the numerical accuracy. This shows that the results are invariant with respect to nonlinear transformations of the data. As the fractal dimensions and Renyi box counting exponents are related to the Hurst exponents we will return to this issue in the subsequent section.

## IV Generalized Hurst exponents

The Hurst exponent ($`H_1`$) has been introduced long ago in the ”rescale range theory” for measurements of the Nile flooding and drought amplitudes . The generalized Hurst exponents, $`H_q=H(q)`$, for a time series $`g(t)`$ ($`t=1,2,\mathrm{}`$) are defined by the scaling properties of its structure functions $`S_q(\tau )`$

$$S_q(\tau )=|g(t+\tau )g(t)|^q_T^{1/q}\tau ^{H(q)}$$
(7)
where $`q>0`$, $`\tau `$ is the time lag and averaging is over the time window $`T\tau `$, usually the largest time scale of the system. The function $`H(q)`$ contains information about averaged generalized volatilities at scale $`\tau `$ (only $`q=1,2`$ are used to define the volatility). In particular, the $`H_1`$ exponent indicates persistent ($`H_1>1/2`$) or antipersistent ($`H_1<1/2`$) behavior of the trend. For the BRW (brown noise, $`1/f^2`$) one gets $`H_q=1/2`$, while for the pink ($`1/f`$) and WN we have $`H_q=0`$. For the popular Lévy stable and truncated Lévy processes with parameter $`\alpha `$ it has been found that $`H_q=q/\alpha `$ for $`q<\alpha `$ and $`H_q=1`$ for $`q\alpha `$ .

The direct computation of the generalized Hurst exponents was performed for return times $`\tau =1`$, $`10`$ and $`60`$ min. as well as for $`\tau =1`$ day (as for the generalized Renyi exponents of the graphs) and for the index $`q=0.5`$, $`1.0`$, $`2.0`$ and $`4.0`$. The value $`q=0`$ cannot be used, as $`q>0`$ (see eq. (7)). Computation of $`H_q`$ for the DAX index is displayed in Fig. 9. The linear scaling in the log-log plot is here excellent and the corresponding results are collected in Table II. One can clearly see that $`H_q`$ decreases with increasing $`q`$, though this effect is smaller for longer time lags. Also, for the smaller $`q`$-values it decreases with the increasing return time $`\tau `$, at least within the range $`\tau =1÷30`$ min., and the process is persistent ($`H_1>1/2`$). Very interestingly however, for the larger $`q`$-values this tendency gets reversed: $`H_4(\tau )`$ can be seen to approach the BRW limit from below assuming values significantly lower than 1/2 at the high-frequencies. For $`\tau 10`$ min. the exponent $`H_1`$ approaches the BRW value, $`1/2`$. Notice, that at around $`\tau _c30`$ min. the tail index is also stabilized (see Sec. II). Similar critical value of $`\tau `$ was also reported for S&P500 index in  and estimated $`\tau _c20`$ min. (from (7) it is clear that the structure function $`S_2(\tau )`$ of the index is equivalent to the volatility $`v(\tau )`$). Hence, the correlations cease to exist slightly faster for DAX. This may indicate that the correlations are weaker in the smaller market. Also, for high frequency data the $`q`$–dependence is much stronger. When $`\tau `$ grows, crossing the critical value $`\tau _c`$, $`H_q`$ becomes almost independent of $`q`$.

For completeness we have performed the same computation for the DAX returns. The quality of the linear scaling in this case is not as excellent as for the index itself but still it quite consistently points to $`H_q0.0`$ for all the calculated values of $`q`$ and $`\tau `$, the same result as for the WN (in contrast to the index that considerably differs from BRW). This difference may be explained by the existence of stronger correlations for the index.

## V Discussion and summary

The financial processes are governed by a complex dynamics with many degrees of freedom and various additional noise terms due to complicated interactions with the external environment. This is a non–stationary evolutionary process with strong correlations, to large extent resembling biological evolution, and it cannot be viewed as an equilibrium process . From this perspective it is not very surprising that the formalism that is so far available may not yet offer an optimal scheme to consistently comprise all the related effects. The present paper constitutes an attempt to provide some further relevant empirical characteristics for another important world stock market, the Deutsche Aktienindex, in addition to what already is available in the literature. Several such characteristics, not always easy to interpret, are identified.

In particular, the returns’ pdf displays Pareto (fat) tails of the type $`1/x^\alpha `$. As was shown in Sec. II the distribution of the DAX returns has its central part close to the Lévy distribution with $`\alpha `$ from $`1.2`$ (minutely returns) up to $`\alpha 1.7`$ (daily returns). Within the ”tail region”, i.e. for returns greater than $`3`$ but below $`10÷20`$ standard deviations, a simple linear regression implies the tail index $`\alpha 2.4`$ for minutely returns and up to $`\alpha 3.5`$ for daily returns. The available data sets seem to be too small to calculate (with reasonable certainty level) the tail behavior beyond $`10÷20`$ standard deviations. We find various tail indices for various regions of the distribution, for different return times and for different financial indices (see e.g.  for comparison). There is no doubt that the power like behavior plays important role, but its manifestations are more complex than it was originally assumed. It is worth to mention that similar multiscaling of pdf was found in a monofractal toy model discussed by Bouchaud et al .

From the dynamical point of view more important than pdf are Hurst and Renyi exponents of the index and returns’ graph. This is because they take into account the time dependence of the process. Therefore, the main part of our analysis was devoted to study these quantities. For regular (mono–) fractal set the following simple relation between fractal exponent of the graph ($`d_0`$) and the Hurst exponent is often satisfied

$$d_0=1+EH_1$$
(8)
where $`E`$ is the embedding dimension of the data series ($`E=1`$ for a one dimensional data). In particular, this relation is preserved for the WN, for the BRW as well as for the Weierstrass–Mandelbrot fractal  and for any fractional Brownian motion . This relation is usually used when discussing the fractal behavior of financial indices. However, the often cited relation (8) is not fulfilled in our case. In general, the multifractal formalism for a function, instead of the exact spectrum, yields an upper bound of its Hölder spectrum . Hence, in principle it is necessary to calculate the Renyi exponents by direct application of the box counting algorithm for the graphs.

We have used the (2–dimensional) box counting algorithm to calculate the fractal properties of the financial graphs. The Renyi exponents with $`q=0.5`$, $`1.0`$, $`2.0`$ and $`4.0`$ for the DAX index were found to be around $`1.3`$, slowly decreasing with growing $`q`$ (about $`15`$% below the constant BRW value, $`1.5`$). However, for the DAX returns the corresponding values turn out not to be so precisely determined due to a somewhat poorer scaling but still can be localized within the range $`1.4÷1.7`$, more below the WN value and with stronger $`q`$–dependence. The decrease of $`d_q`$ with growing $`q`$, usually viewed as a sign of multifractality, is bigger here than for the index itself, especially for the high–frequency data (1 min. returns). It is worth to notice that the estimated difference between the fractal exponents of the index and exponents of the corresponding differential series (returns) is only about $`0.2÷0.3`$, while it is exactly equal to $`0.5`$ for the BRW and WN. As a potential most visible and significant difference between the behavior of the financial index and BRW, this effect demands however further more systematic study. Comparing the above results with the calculated Hurst exponents one can also see that the relation (8) is violated for the index and seems to be violated even more for the returns. In contrast to the Renyi exponents, the generalized Hurst exponents for returns are compatible with those of the WN (equal to zero). For the index we obtain persistent behavior ($`H_1=0.51÷0.63`$) which is slightly stronger for short time lags. Here, the $`q`$–dependence is also stronger than for the $`d_q`$.

One can conclude that the DAX data series, both for the (logarithm of) index and its returns, have very complicated self–similar structures that may escape any unique multifractal description. One likely reason is that the real financial data series are superpositions of series with different properties, e.g. for the ”regular” and ”rush” hours as was suggested recently . To clarify these intriguing effects further empirical and theoretical analysis is necessary.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank F. Grümmer and J. Kwapień for helpful exchanges. M. Frame and J. Szmigielski of Yale Math. Dept. are acknowledged for clarifying comments concerning fractal and Hurst exponents.


text:
# An Optical Clock with Ultracold Neutral Atoms

## Abstract

We demonstrate how to realize an optical clock with neutral atoms that is competitive to the currently best single ion optical clocks in accuracy and superior in stability. Using ultracold atoms in a Ca optical frequency standard we show how to reduce the relative uncertainty to below $`10^{15}`$. We observed atom interferences for stabilization of the laser to the clock transition with a visibility of 0.36, which is 70% of the ultimate limit achievable with atoms at rest. A novel scheme was applied to detect these atom interferences with the prospect to reach the quantum projection noise limit at an exceptional low instability of $`4\times 10^{17}`$ in 1 s.

Progress of science and technology has been closely connected to the development of sophisticated methods to measure time and frequency. From the highly developed pendulum clocks of around 1900 to today’s most advanced Cs atomic clocks, realizing the SI time unit, the increase in relative accuracy from $`10^7`$ to $`10^{15}`$ was mainly made possible by an increase in the operational frequency from the Hz to the GHz range. With optical comb generators based on femtosecond lasers Holzwarth et al. (2001) now optical frequencies can be connected to radio frequencies with an uncertainty below $`10^{18}`$ Stenger et al. (2002), enabling optical clocks at frequencies that are five orders of magnitude higher than the frequency of the Cs transition.

With this ’clockwork’ available the performance of an optical clock primarily depends on the ’pendulum’, i.e. on the atomic or molecular transition, and equally important on the method that is used to interrogate the ’pendulum’ with the least noise while keeping all disturbances at a minimum. In an optical clock this corresponds to probing the transition at the best possible signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and stabilizing the laser to the true undisturbed line center.

The achieved uncertainties of optical clocks based on single ions of $`10^{14}`$ (Hg+ Udem et al. (2001), Yb+ Stenger et al. (2001)) and on large numbers of neutral absorbers of $`10^{14}`$ (Ca Udem et al. (2001); Wilpers (2002), H Niering et al. (2000)) are still about an order of magnitude worse than the best Cs atomic clocks Clairon et al. (1996); Weyers et al. (2001); Jefferts et al. (2002). In contrast to the single ion standards, where the absorber is confined to a small volume, the neutral atom standards are ultimately limited by the residual velocity of the absorbers, but, on the other hand, benefit from the higher signal to noise ratio due to the large number of atoms which can lead to exceptionally low instabilities. At present a combined instability of the optical frequency standards with cold calcium atoms and an optical comb generator phase locked to a single mercury ion standard of $`7\times 10^{15}`$ in 1 s has been reached Diddams et al. (2001). This value is already close to the theoretical limit for single ion standards, but still two orders of magnitude higher than what can theoretically be achieved with neutral atom standards.

In this letter we show on the example of the calcium standard how the use of ultracold atoms makes neutral atom optical frequency standards competitive in accuracy to the best microwave standards and can improve the stability to unprecedented levels.

For the interrogation of optical transitions of laser-cooled atoms generally a ’separated field excitation’ Ramsey (1950) in the time domain Bordé et al. (1984); Oates et al. (1999); Trebst et al. (2001) with two consecutive pairs of laser pulses from opposite directions is used. Such a pulsed excitation scheme represents an atom interferometer with laser pulses acting as beam splitters in analogy to an optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer Bordé (1989).

The excitation sequence leads to a cosine-shaped signal where the argument of the cosine is given by the phase $`\mathrm{\Phi }=4\pi T_{\mathrm{sep}}(\nu _{\mathrm{laser}}\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}})+(\varphi _2\varphi _1)+(\varphi _4\varphi _3)`$ which depends on the time $`T_{\mathrm{sep}}`$ between the pulses in each pulse pair, the laser detuning $`\nu _{\mathrm{laser}}\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}}`$ and the laser phases $`\varphi _i`$ in the i-th interaction. These phases appear in this atom-light interferometer because the phase of each beamsplitting laser pulse is transferred to the atomic partial wave. For perfect alignment these phase differences cancel, however, net phase differences remain when atoms of the cloud move between the pulses to a position where the local phase of the laser is different, e.g. due to curved wavefronts or tilted laser beams Trebst et al. (2001).

To achieve optimum visibility of the resulting interference fringes, 50 % splitters are necessary. For resonant excitation this requires $`\pi /2`$-pulses, defined by the Rabi angle $`\mathrm{\Omega }_R\times \tau =\pi /2`$ with the Rabi frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_R\sqrt{I\gamma }`$. In particular for narrow linewidth $`\gamma `$, as needed in a frequency standard, the Rabi frequency at the available laser intensity $`I`$ is rather low, setting a lower limit on the pulse duration $`\tau _p`$ which is $`\tau _p1\mu `$s in our experiment. For non-resonant excitation, the excitation probability is diminished with a half width equal to the Fourier width of the single pulse. Due to the Doppler effect this translates to an acceptance range of atomic velocities, that effectively contribute to the interference signal. For our set up this acceptance range is in the order of 15 cm/s. For broader velocity distributions only a part of the atomic ensemble contributes to the atom interferences, thereby reducing the contrast and the SNR.

In addition, the velocity dependent excitation probability influences the amplitude and the incoherent background of the observed signal. This background may shift the central interference fringe from the undisturbed line center. To correct for this shift and to recover the undisturbed center the signal has to be calculated by an integration over the actual velocity distribution, which becomes less reliable as the velocity spread becomes wider than the acceptance range.

We realize a neutral atom optical frequency standard by stabilizing a laser ($`\lambda =657`$ nm) to the intercombination transition from the ground state $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ to the metastable state $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ of 40Ca which has a natural linewidth of $`\gamma /2\pi =320`$ Hz Pasternack et al. (1980). Like other alkaline earth elements, 40Ca has a $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$ ground state that is little sensitive to external fields, making it an ideal candidate for an optical frequency standard, and a nearly closed dipole transition $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$$`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}`$ for effective laser cooling. About 107 atoms at a temperature of a few millikelvin are prepared by means of a magneto-optical trap (MOT). The corresponding velocity width of this cold ensemble previously presented a major contribution to the uncertainty of the Ca standard of $`2\times 10^{14}`$ Wilpers (2002) as a result of the influences mentioned above.

To overcome this limitation we apply a new quench cooling and trapping scheme on the narrow intercombination transition Binnewies et al. (2001) leading to ultracold atoms with a temperature below $`T=10\mu `$K.

Now, the frequency width of the whole signal is given by the Fourier width of the exciting pulses (fig. 1) which is dramatically different from the signal of cold atoms ($`T=2.7`$ mK, inset of fig. 1) where the width is given by the Doppler width. Therefore, with the strongly reduced width of the velocity distribution nearly all atoms contribute to the interference signal, leading to an observed contrast of 0.36, i. e. 70 % of the optimum contrast that would be achievable with atoms at zero velocity. The interrogation is performed with a ballistically expanding ensemble of ultracold Ca atoms released from the MOT after 220 ms of cooling, where the interference pattern is measured by detecting the fluorescence for 500 $`\mu `$s emitted in the decay of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ state after the last pulse of the atom interferometric sequence that takes between 45 $`\mu `$s and 1.3 ms resulting in a single measurement cycle time $`T_{\mathrm{cyc}}220`$ ms. The measured interference pattern is in good agreement with calculations based on a spinor approach Bordé et al. (1984). Here a Gaussian velocity distribution and rectangular pulses were assumed resulting in a contrast $`K=0.42`$. The asymmetry in the line shape originates from the sum of the excitation probabilities of two interferometers realized at the same time by the pulsed excitation scheme. Due to the photon recoil the two interferogramms are centered at $`\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}}\pm 11.5\mathrm{kHz}`$ while the incoherent background is centered at $`\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}}+11.5\mathrm{kHz}`$. The small deviations from theory can be attributed to slow variations of atom number during the long scanning time of 40 minutes with 720 points averaged over 15 measurement cycles each.

The SNR of the detection scheme used so far is limited by fluctuations in the atom number and by the shot noise of the detected fluorescence photons, because only one photon per excited atom is emitted and from those only a small fraction can be detected. The ultimate instability $`\sigma _y`$ of a frequency standard as a function of the averaging time $`\tau `$ is given by the quantum projection noise (QPN) limit Itano et al. (1993) to

$$\sigma _y(\tau )=\frac{1}{\pi }\times \frac{1}{\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}4}T_{\mathrm{sep}}}\times \sqrt{\frac{1\overline{p}}{N_0K^2\overline{p}}}\times \sqrt{\frac{T_{\mathrm{cyc}}}{\tau }}.$$
(1)
The second term is the inverse of the quality factor $`Q=\nu _{\mathrm{Ca}}/\delta \nu `$ with the effective linewidth $`\delta \nu `$ set by the pulse separation $`T_{\mathrm{sep}}`$. The third term is the QPN-limited SNR of one measurement cycle depending on the contrast $`K`$, the mean excitation probability $`\overline{p}`$ and the total number of atoms $`N_0`$.

To reach the QPN-limit a detection probability close to unity is necessary. It can be obtained by detecting ground state atoms via their resonance fluorescence when cycled on the cooling transition in the singlet system, which gives a high number of photons per atom. However, such electron shelving detection schemes Nagourney et al. (1986) for optical frequency standards with cold atoms have suffered from atom number fluctuations or from heating of the atoms when a normalization was applied Oates et al. (1999). The novel scheme presented here measures both the ground and the excited state atoms after the interferometry. Immediately after the last pulse of the atom interferometric sequence the number of atoms in the ground state is measured by cycling them on the $`{}_{}{}^{1}S_{0}^{}`$$`{}_{}{}^{1}P_{1}^{}`$ transition by a resonant single laser beam and detection of the fluorescence. By the radiation pressure the atoms are accelerated and should leave the interaction region. After one to two natural lifetimes of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ state this measurement is repeated, giving a measure for the number of atoms that have been in the excited state after the interferometry. In addition to waiting for the spontaneous decay also a pulse on the quenching transition was applied. From both values a normalized excitation probability independent of atom number fluctuations can be derived. This scheme is particularly suited for ultracold atoms due to the low average velocity and the slow expansion of the atomic cloud by less than 50 $`\mu `$m, while for a cold ensemble, part of the excited atoms would have left the detection region before decaying to the ground state. Our new simple scheme avoids any heating of the ensemble before the spectroscopy and allows the elimination of atom number fluctuations. Hence, no basic limitation exists any longer that prevents one from reaching the quantum projection noise limit. Fig. 2 shows interference fringes with a period of 2.3 kHz that were detected with the new state-selective scheme probing an ensemble of about $`10^6`$ atoms. The SNR is increased by a factor of 6 compared to the SNR reached with the previous detection method. The improvement corresponds to an instability of $`5\times 10^{14}`$ in 1 s and was mainly limited by amplitude noise of the detection laser.

For the principle limit of the stability we calculated a $`\sigma _y(1s)=4\times 10^{17}`$ according to eq. 1 based on the data from our experimental set up. Here we took into account the improvements of our experimental set up with the cooling laser power increased by an order of magnitude, the utilization of a Zeeman slower and the transfer efficiency to the ultracold ensemble of 12 % increased to an optimal value of 50 %. With these improvements we expect $`N_0=3\times 10^7`$ atoms in a cycle time $`T_{\mathrm{cyc}}=20`$ ms with the temperature at the limit of the quench-cooling $`T=6\mu `$Binnewies et al. (2001). We find an optimum stability at a resolution of 390 Hz with a corresponding contrast of $`K=0.32`$ and mean excitation probability $`\overline{p}=0.2`$ where we take into account the degradation of coherence in the atom interferometer due to the duration of the interferometry ($`2T_{\mathrm{sep}}`$) approaching the lifetime of the excited $`{}_{}{}^{3}P_{1}^{}`$ state and the finite pulse width in combination with the Doppler broadening of the ensemble.

To reach the QPN-limit for our set up, an intensity stability of the detection laser of $`10^4`$ and a frequency stability of 300 kHz is sufficient. For the spectroscopy laser an instability of $`3\times 10^{16}`$ is necessary for the duration of the atom interferometry $`2T_{\mathrm{sep}}1.3`$ ms. While laser instabilities better than 1 Hz in 1 s have already been demonstrated Salomon et al. (1988); Young et al. (1999), to have the necessary performance of the free running spectroscopy laser at one’s disposal is still a challenging task.

In addition to high stability the utilization of ultracold atoms leads to a considerably increased accuracy. The main contribution to the uncertainty of the Ca frequency standard arises from residual first order Doppler effects due to wavefront imperfections of the exciting laser beams. E.g., in a symmetric three-pulse atom interferometer with equal pulse separations $`T_{\mathrm{sep}}`$ the movement of the atoms through the wavefronts (radius of curvature $`R`$) of the exciting laser beam results in a phase shift

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=AT_{\mathrm{sep}}^2\mathrm{with}A=\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{g}+|\stackrel{}{k}|v_{}^2/R,$$
(2)
where $`\stackrel{}{g}`$ denotes the gravitational acceleration and $`v_{}`$ the velocity component perpendicular to the wavevector of the exciting laser pulse $`\stackrel{}{k}`$. For an intentionally misaligned beam ($`R12`$ m) this phase shift in dependence of the time between the pulses is shown in fig. 3 for a Doppler-cooled ensemble ($`T`$ = 2.8 mK) and for a quench-cooled ensemble ($`T`$ = 14 $`\mu `$K). Because of the reduction of $`v_{}^2`$ by a factor of more than 200, the second term in the above equation becomes negligible and the remaining phase shift can be fully explained by the slight deviation from horizontal alignment of the laser beam ($`\stackrel{}{k}\stackrel{}{g}0`$) while for the Doppler-cooled ensemble this effect is hidden by the much stronger influence of the wavefront curvature. By measuring the quadratic dependencies for both directions that are used in the four pulse interferometer with antiparallel laser beams, the major contribution of the Doppler effect to the frequency shift that changes linearly with $`T_{\mathrm{sep}}`$ can be calculated and corrected for. We investigated how to control and optimize the wavefront curvature with atom interferometric as well as optical means. The combination of optimized wavefronts ($`|1/R|<1/300`$ m-1, beams perpendicular to gravity within 6 $`\mu `$rad and antiparallel within 22 $`\mu `$rad) together with the ultracold atoms ($`T=6\mu `$K, average velocity $`<1`$ mm/s) will reduce the contribution of the residual Doppler effect to the uncertainty from 4.6 Hz to only 150 mHz Wilpers (2002); Wilpers et al. (2001).

At this level other contributions like collisions between the atoms will play the dominant role. From our measurements at $`T3`$ mK we determine the coefficient of the density-dependent relative frequency shift $`\alpha =(3.0\pm 4.4)\times 10^{30}\mathrm{m}^3`$ Wilpers (2002) which is more than a factor of 200 smaller than in the Cs microwave clock. With the accuracy and stability now at hand using ultracold atoms this dependence can be measured more accurately and then be used to correct the clock frequency accordingly. Assuming the same coefficient $`\alpha `$ for the ultracold atoms and a similar density of $`1.3\times 10^9`$ cm-3 known with a relative uncertainty of 10 % we estimate the uncertainty for the correction to be 260 mHz. Altogether, the expected total relative uncertainty will be $`8\times 10^{16}`$ with other contributions due to magnetic fields (80 mHz), blackbody radiation (50 mHz) and electric fields (20 mHz). From calculated interferograms (Fig. 1) we estimate the uncertainty due to the line asymmetry for the application of a 3f-stabilization scheme at a resolution of 390 Hz to below 50 mHz with no correction applied Wilpers (2002); Wilpers et al. (2001).

In conclusion, we presented measurements that show how the calcium optical frequency standard can reach a relative uncertainty of below $`10^{15}`$ and a quantum projection noise limited instability of $`4\times 10^{17}`$ in only 1 s, which will make it competitive in accuracy and superior in stability to existing microwave standards and single ion optical clocks, respectively. Besides the use as an optical clock the sensitivity, the high signal-to-noise ratio and the reliable theoretical modeling of the atom interferences can be used for various sensor applications.

The work was supported by the Sonderforschungsbereich SFB 407 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and by the PhD programme of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt.