Design concept for the microwave interrogation structure in PARCS
Open Access
- 7 July 2004
- conference paper
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Abstract
Inthis paper we will describe key aspects of the ,conceptual design of the microwave interrogation structure in the laser-cooled cesium frequency standard that is part of the Primary Atomic Reference Clock in Space (PARCS) experiment. The PARCS standard uses balls of cold atoms launched in a pulsed beam configuration. The microwave interrogation will take place in two independent high-Q (~20,000) cavities operated in the TE011 mode. The cavities will be operated off resonance by several line widths, with a resonant structure delivering the microwaves to the two cavities. One persistent problem related to the end-to-end phase shift has been the extreme temperature sensitivity of the phase inside the cavities to that just outside the cavities. The end-to-end phase difference must ultimately be known to around 3 microradians, and stable long enough to allow measurement of the shift as well as to allow normal clock operation. Operating the cavities off-resonance reduces this sensitivity more strongly than reducing the cavity Q.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- PARCS: a Primary Atomic Reference Clock in SpacePublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2003
- Phase modulation with independent cavity-phase control in laser cooled clocks in spacePublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- Recent results of Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt's primary clock CS1IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, 2000