Single clock performance at NIST and offshore. a. The 3U, 19-inch rack-mounted iodine optical clock has a volume of 35 liters and consumes less than 100W of power. b. Iodine clock phase noise. c, Overlapping Allen biases of iodine clocks operating at NIST and offshore. On short time scales, instability in dynamic environments is similar to that in the laboratory. d, the clocks can maintain 10 ps holdover for hours and 1 ns holdover for days, demonstrating their potential as the basis for picosecond-level timing networks. Credits: the nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07225-2
A team of physicists and engineers at Vector Atomic, Inc., a maker of navigation and communications equipment, has developed a new atomic clock that they claim is ultra-precise and powerful. the natureThe team describes the reasons for creating the new clock and how it performed during field tests on a ship in the Pacific.
Bonnie Marlowe and MITER Corporation’s Jonathan Hirschauer posted News & Views in the same journal issue, outlining the need for ultra-precision atomic clocks and the work done by the Vector Atomics team.
As the equipment used on ships became more sophisticated, the technology behind them became more dependent on precise timing. Navigation uses radio systems, such as GPS. With such systems, very small timing errors when measuring signal propagation between satellites can cause positioning errors of hundreds of meters, which can have a major impact when warships are engaged.
Currently, ships rely on atomic clocks that are powerful enough to operate on rotating ships, but are far less accurate than the clocks used in research labs. In this new effort, the Vector Atomic team has developed a clock to help bridge the gap.
The watch, which is based on the iodine molecule, weighs just 26 kilograms, is about the size of three shoeboxes, and is small enough to be used on almost any boat. The company claims it is about 1,000 times more accurate than the type of clock currently used on most ships.
The team is working with the New Zealand Navy during the watch’s development. They tested the watch on board HMNZS Aotearoa, which has been conducting normal shipping operations in the Pacific for three weeks. Test data showed that the clock was almost as accurate as tested in the laboratory – to within 300 trillionths of a second on any given day.
The development team notes that they are continuing to work on the watch, hoping to make it small enough to carry navigation satellites.
More information:
Jonathan D. Roslund et al., Maritime Optical Clocks, the nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07225-2
Bonnie LS Marlow et al., Robust optical clocks ensure stable time in portable packages, the nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-01022-7
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