NIST's Alexander Staron (left), William McGehee and Gabriela Martinez worked together on a new chip-scale version of an atomic beam clock, a tiny fraction of the size of the original instrument shown here.
Credit: R. Jacobson/NIST
A new type of miniature atomic clock could provide better timing over the span of weeks and months compared with current systems. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in collaboration with researchers from Georgia Tech, have made the first-of-its-kind chip-scale beam clock. Their work has been published in Nature Communications.
Atomic clocks take many forms, but the oldest and one of the most prominent designs is built using atomic beams. These clocks send a beam of atoms through a vacuum chamber. At one end of the chamber, the atoms are set in a specific quantum state, and they start “ticking.” At the other end their ticking rate is measured or “read out.” Using the atoms’ precise ticking rate, other clocks can be compared to atomic beam clocks, and adjusted to match their timing.
NIST has been using atomic beams for timekeeping since the 1950s. For decades, beam clocks were used to keep the primary standard for the second, and they are still part of NIST’s national timekeeping ensemble. Beam clocks are precise, stable and accurate, but they’re currently not the most portable. The vacuum chambers where the atoms travel are key to the success of these clocks, but they’re bulky in part due to the size of the microwave cavity used to probe the atomic “ticking.” The vacuum chamber for NIST-7, the last beam clock used for the primary frequency standard in the U.S., was more than 2.5 meters or 8 f ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
