[time-nuts] homebrew H maser

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <4C7A6B01.3030908 at rubidium.dyndns.org>, Magnus Danielson writes:
>On 08/29/2010 03:55 PM, Attila Kinali wrote:

>It's a complicated field and several traps to fall into on the way. It 
>is a fairly sizeable project to attempt.

Well, as with so much else, it depends what the level of ambition is.

If you just want to be able to point to the resonance and say "I
did that", it is not intrinsically hard and none of the materials
are hard to get hold of or particularly poisonous.

Few of the problems Ramsey fought in the early 1950'ies are relevante
today, for instance, the entire detection issue is trivially solved
with USRP/GnuRadio.

I would tend to think that $10k in materials would get you pretty
close.

I think the most recent H-maser design is Neuchatels design for
the Galileo GNSS.

Building a _good_ (ie: metrology grade) hydrogen maser, sounds like
the last significant thing you did in your life, however many years
you have left...

Poul-Henning

PS: And if you even manage to build something which works half the
time, and do not suffer from ethics, there is a finite but very
profitable market for audiopholery, and I'm sure somebody is willing
to eliminate the last traces of jitter in his CD-player for just
under $100k...

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