The continuous drive for higher-precision timekeeping underpins advances in fundamental physics, next-generation navigation, and quantum sensing. Today’s best optical clocks are extraordinarily stable and accurate, but their performance is still limited by decoherence and environmental noise, which shorten interrogation times and degrade long-term stability. QUARCKS is a joint theory-experiment effort to overcome these limits by developing a new class of optical clocks and atomic sensors that combine advanced interrogation protocols with robust error-mitigation strategies. The project introduces hybrid control schemes that address both probe-induced frequency shifts and decoherence by merging two powerful techniques: Hyper-Ramsey spectroscopy (HR) and dynamical decoupling (DD). HR provides composite Ramsey-like pulse sequences that intrinsically suppress AC-Stark shifts, while DD uses sequences of phase-shifted π pulses to refocus atomic phases, engineer frequency filters, and dynamically suppress noise.
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