[time-nuts] CSAC and CPT (was: CCD lock detection)

[Attila Kinali]

On Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:01:53 -0700
Tom Knox <actast at hotmail.com> wrote:

> That is interesting, I spoke with a friend at NIST and they were
> still using discrete components on the prototypes developed as
> part of the CSAC for symmetricom. Coherent population must have
> been how they made a very labor intensive prototype affordable.

CPT is not how they made it affordable. CPT made it only possible
to get rid of the bulky microwave cavity. To make it affordable,
they hade to redesign the circuitry and optimize it for production
instead of for research as it was before.

I hope this doesnt sound like i do belittle that work. I'm working
in the same "business" and it's often as much work to make a system
production ready as the research that lead to the device.

BTW: if you dig around, there are still many ways how an atomic
clock can be build, that have never been tried outside the one
research lab that had the idea. Like the fully photonic clock,
that only uses a vapor cell and a gain medium between two mirrors
to create a pulsating laser[1]. It's a neat idea, and it would be
fun to try how stable it is... if i had the equipment to build one
of those...


> My thought on a CCD were directed more toward high dollar products
> like the 5071A where you may be able to see information related to
> signal quality and tube life with greater ease the the current
> Alpha Numeric displays.

Maybe.. dont know. That would be actually a quite nice research topic :-)

			Attila Kinali


[1] "All-photonic clock: Laser-atomic oscillator"
by Yuan Yu Jau, Happer, W.  
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/FREQ.2008.4623083

-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?