CAESIUM ATOMIC CLOCK PC

CAESIUM ATOMIC CLOCK PC

You can use your PC to connect to the NPL atomic clocks over the internet to ensure your computer is synchronised with the national standard. You may well have a radio-controlled clock at home or in school that picks up the MSF signal from Cumbria. The clocks on aircraft, in mobile phone networks and on railway stations all rely on atomic clocks to ensure that they all tell exactly the same time. How many times have you said 'Just a minute”, when you have really meant half an hour? Does it really matter whether we know the time to such a small fraction of a second? You may question the relevance of the atomic time scale in your daily life, but in fact the influence of the atomic clock is everywhere.

A radio signal from Cumbria, known as the MSF time signal, connects the atomic clocks at NPL to clocks all over the UK, enabling them to be in precise synchronisation. There are now thousands of atomic clocks across the globe, and a constellation of satellites carrying atomic clocks orbits the Earth. The second is the most accurately realised of the SI units, and the first to be defined using a quantum standard (the only SI unit still defined by a physical artefact is the kilogram). The best clocks today are over 100,000 times more accurate than Essen’s clock, keeping time to within a tenth of a billionth of a second a day. In 1967 atomic clocks allowed the second to be redefined from solar time to atomic time. Since Essen's first demonstration the atomic clock has been developed and refined almost beyond recognition and its diverse applications permeate our daily lives. Using an idea first proposed by Lord Kelvin in 1879, this was the first confirmation that a clock based on atomic structure could keep time more accurately than any method based on the movement of celestial bodies. ON 3 June 1955 scientist Louis Essen, working at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, Middlesex, pencilled columns of numbers and hand-drawn graphs into his laboratory book, to be written up at a later date. Able to meet the most demanding applications in data centers, financial networks, smart grids, transportation, metrology, scientific research and more, they will also be a foundation for future innovation as we continue to expand the boundaries of possibility for accuracy and stability.Our concept of time is based on what we see around us - the planets and stars - but, says Fiona Auty, to be really useful, time needs to come from a somewhat smaller source These devices will support advances in a host of different technology fields. Patrick Berthoud, time and frequency chief scientist at Oscilloquartz, ADVA adds, “As well as meeting new sync requirements, our OSA 3300-HP will help simplify operations with its easy-to-use GUI for intuitive configuration and operation. Now, as well as providing phase holdover as part of ePRTC systems, it can be utilized as a free-running frequency source with enhanced standard performance. What’s more, says the company, further to the launch of the OSA 3300-HP, it is also announcing a dual-purpose enhancement of its OSA 3350 ePRC+. Its product lifespan is 100% longer than competing high-performance magnetic cesium clocks the OSA 3300-HP delivers optimum stability for over 10 years.

This enables it to measure 100 times the number of atoms, making it radically more efficient compared to existing primary reference clock (PRC) technologies, says the company. Offering performance that far exceeds best-in-class magnetic cesium devices, the OSA 3300-HP features an all-digital design and leverages optical-pumping techniques using laser diodes. “After many years of extensive work in our Swiss laboratories supported by the European Space Agency, we now have a mature, state-of-the-art technology that enables a major leap in the accuracy and stability of network timing while providing a substantially longer lifetime.”Ītomic clocks offer the ultimate synchronization backup for networks that rely on GNSS-based timing, combining high accuracy with outstanding availability. “The launch of our coreSync OSA 3300-HP marks a key milestone in the design of atomic frequency and phase standards,” says Gil Biran, GM of Oscilloquartz, ADVA. The feature-rich device has embedded Ethernet- and IP-based management as well as a user-friendly touchscreen GUI. Offered as the market’s only high-performance optical cesium clock, the OSA 3300-HP, provides the resilience required for PNT assurance in critical infrastructure and empowering service providers to deliver differentiated SLA timing offerings with integrated GNSS backup.

Caesium atomic clock