[time-nuts] Thinking outside the box a super reference
Magnus Danielson
magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
Fri Nov 4 19:16:40 EDT 2016
Poul-Henning,
On 11/05/2016 12:04 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> --------
> In message <59dc074a-3a09-6315-29d4-6877c3bf7510 at rubidium.dyndns.org>, Magnus Danielson write
> s:
>
>>> With respect to precision machining, that space has changed a lot
>>> over the last five years, with precision CNC machines, factory
>>> or home-built, dropping dramatically in price.
>>
>> You need to tune it regardless.
>
> First: Yes, but if you pick a sensible vibration mode for your
> microwave resonance, that can be done with an screw-in endcap.
Indeed.
> Second: No, I would actually not need to tune it.
>
> Historically resonance cavities were used so that step/avalance
> diode multipliers had enough power to excite them. Today we have
> semiconductors which work at those frequencies.
>
> Later people kept the resonance, because it works well with low
> power budgets in telecoms/milspec applications.
>
> But the resonanance leads to all sorts of trouble, including frequency
> pulling, temperature sensitivities etc.
>
> We're neither space nor power constrained, we'd probably be
> perfectly happy if the end result is 4U and 100W, so resonance
> is not mandatory.
Sure, but if you do have a cavity, as you was hinting at, tuning it is
still needed for the cavity pull effect.
> Third: A lot of the "everybody knows" about which atoms can be
> used for active vs. passive atomic standards comes from the
> state of the art electronics about 30 years ago.
Sure, but some behaviors just remains there when still using such setups.
> Using laser-pumping and modern semiconductors, it might actually
> be possible to detect the 6.8GHz photons from the Rb.
>
> They won't be coherent photons, like in a Hydrogen maser, but we
> don't need them to be, in fact that just causes the same exact
> problems as the tuned cavity anyway, as long as we can measure
> the frequency well enough.
You can avoid the cavity using sidebands of the pumping laser and all
that, yes I know.
Active maser like the hydrogen would be possible naturally, but would
require the resonator.
A passive direct observation would also possible, but detection will be
harder and then you would run into S/N issues.
> (No, I havn't done the math on this, my wife has banned me from
> starting any new projects until our house is finished.)
Probably a wise thing.
Cheers,
Magnus
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