Speaker
Mr
Christian Schori
(Spectratime Orolia (CH))
Description
The goal of this project was to demonstrate a mercury ion frequency standard (MIFS) at laboratory breadboard level (TRL3). The choice of using mercury ions has several advantages:
- High clock frequency (40.5 GHz) in combination with a narrow resonance (1 Hz) resulting in high Q-factor > 4E10
- Low sensitivity to magnetic-, temperature-, and cooling gas fluctuations
- Low sensitivity to optical intensity fluctuations (light shift)
The combination of high Q-factor and low parameter sensitivity result in both good short- and long-term frequency stability. In this project we have build a bread-board demonstrator (photo left) with an intrinsic frequency stability of 3E-12 @1s and integrating down to 1E-14 @1day (graph right).
Currently our data indicate a frequency drift of 1E-14/day. However our target is a MIFS with frequency drift 2E-15/day and total volume of 3 litres. This clock can be useful for both the ground- and space segments of Galileo, and serve as ultra-stable onboard clock for deep space missions.
Primary authors
Mr
Christian Schori
(Spectratime Orolia (CH))
Mr
Pascal Rochat
(Spectratime Orolia (CH))
Mr
Qinghua Wang
(Spectratime Orolia (CH))
