Mitigation of the light shift in laser cooled clocks without mechanical shutters

We propose an approach for keeping the light shift in laser cooled frequency standards down to the 10^-17 level without the use of mechanical shutters. For laser systems using a master-slave laser configuration, cutting the injection power to a slave causes it to lase at its free-running wavelength, often two or more nanometers off from the atomic resonance. This approach does not apply to laser systems using power amplifiers.