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193699

Time scales steered by optical clocks

T. Ido H. Hachisu F. Nakagawa Y. Hanado

pp. 143-149

Abstract

Although optical frequency standards made rapid progress these days, microwave standards are still employed as source oscillators of time scales because an oscillator free from phase jumps is a prerequisite. Currently, for high-end users such as national metrology laboratories, hydrogen masers (H-masers) have adequate balance of the stability and reliability. Thus, optical clocks may play the role of the standards to which the time scales refer to in order to adjust their scale intervals. The benefit of using optical frequency standards, in this case, would be the capability to evaluate the scale interval of the H-maser more quickly. To investigate such possibilities of "optical" steering, we evaluated the behavior of an H-maser over a few months with reference to a 87Sr lattice clock. The evaluations clearly demonstrated a stable linear drift of the H-maser frequency, indicating the capability of compensating the drift for a stable time scale. This prospect was also supported by a numerical simulation based on the record of H-maser-UTC(NICT)-UTC link.

Publication details

Published in:

Felicitas Arias Elisa, Combrinck Ludwig, Gabor Pavel, Hohenkerk Catherine (2017) The science of time 2016: time in astronomy & society, past, present and future. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 143-149

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-59909-0_19

Full citation:

Ido T., Hachisu H., Nakagawa F., Hanado Y. (2017) „Time scales steered by optical clocks“, In: E. Felicitas arias, L. Combrinck, P. Gabor & C. Hohenkerk (eds.), The science of time 2016, Dordrecht, Springer, 143–149.