[time-nuts] laser locking

[cdelect at juno.com]

Attila,

When researching ways to improve the 5065A (AKA the SUPER 5065A) I
considered using a laser.

However the long term operation is hard to optimize.

Tuning the laser is a combination of temperature and current to select
the proper line. (and optics if you use a grating tuning)

It's cumbersome at best even if you don't lock the laser to a Rubidium
cell.

Since I was able to get performance better than any published Rubidium
standard using the regular RF excited lamps I decided "why go the Laser
route?" 

Note this performance is better than the laser pumped experimental models
in the literature.

I'm sure once the diode technology becomes mature enough to be reliable
you will start seeing them in commercial standards.

Until then it is just fun to play with but not very sensible for reliable
operation.

Corby Dawson