Stability measurements of a JPL multi-pole mercury trapped ion frequency standard at the USNO

Author

Tjoelker, R.L. ; Prestage, J.D. ; Koppang, P.A. ; Swanson, T.B.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

fYear

2003

fDate

4-8 May 2003

Firstpage

1066

Lastpage

1071

Abstract

Two 12-pole mercury trapped ion frequency standards were recently developed and compared at JPL. In July 2002 one of these standards was installed at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) where it has since been continuously operating. The standard is configured with a hydrogen maser as the local oscillator and is continuously compared to approximately 10 other cavity-tuned hydrogen masers, 50 cesium standards, and the USNO master clock UTC(USNO). Stability measurements between the trapped ion standard and several USNO formulated clock ensembles over the entire 9 month operating period to date show very stable operation with a worst case differential frequency drift between any 60 day averaging period measured to be <2×10^-16/day.

Keywords

Doppler shift; atomic clocks; frequency standards; oscillators; trapped ions; 50 cesium standard; Cs; United States Naval Observatory; cavity tuned hydrogen masers; differential frequency drift; hydrogen maser; ion frequency standard; local oscillator; multipole mercury trapped ion frequency; stability measurement; Atomic measurements; Clocks; Frequency measurement; Hydrogen; Laboratories; Masers; Measurement standards; Propulsion; Robust stability; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frequency Control Symposium and PDA Exhibition Jointly with the 17th European Frequency and Time Forum, 2003. Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International

ISSN

1075-6787

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7688-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FREQ.2003.1275238

Filename

1275238