Absolute Frequency Measurement of ^1S0 - ^3P1 Clock Transition in Ultra-Cold Strontium

Cold Alkaline-Earth atoms show a great promise as future optical frequency standards and as key components in optical atomic clocks. The narrow-line inter-combination transitions characteristic of these atoms yield high line QÂ's. The sub-Hz ^1S₀ - ^3P₀ transition in fermionic ^87Sr may prove to be the ultimate optical frequency standard as a line Q of > 10^17 is predicted. As a first step towards developing this standard, we have trapped bosonic ^88Sr in a narrow-line (7.5 kHz natural width) ^1S₀ - ^3P₁ MOT resulting in sub-microkelvin samples of atoms. We present detailed studies on trap dynamics, precision spectroscopy of these ultracold atoms, as well as our most recent absolute frequency measurements of the ^1S₀ - ^3P₁ transition.