Towards the establishment of a cesium fountain clock at CENAM

The Time and Frequency Division of the Centro Nacional de Metrologia, CENAM, is currently developing a Cesium fountain frequency standard, which is called CENAM CsF-1. Early reports about the development of a Cs Fountain clock at CENAM have been made [1]. However, in this paper we report the design, construction and characterization of the main systems of the CENAM CsF-1 clock including the physical package, the local oscillator and the optical system. Also we report measurements of the number of trapped Cs atoms, atoms temperature measurements and characterization of the Sapphire oscillator used as local oscillator for 9.2 GHz generation.