Scientists have developed a new atomic clock that is both highly accurate and robust

Scientists have developed a new atomic clock that is both highly accurate and robust

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Single-hour performance at NIST and at sea. A, 19-inch 3U rackmount Iodine clock occupies 35 liters of volume and consumes less than 100 W, measured phase noise for Iodine clock. C, Overlay of the Allen deviation for the iodine clock operating at NIST and at sea. In short time intervals, instability in a dynamic environment is similar to the laboratory. d, the clocks can maintain 10 ps holds for several hours and 1 ns for several days, demonstrating their potential as the basis for a picosecond-level timing network. credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07225-2

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Single-hour performance at NIST and at sea. A, 19-inch 3U rackmount Iodine clock occupies 35 liters of volume and consumes less than 100 W, measured phase noise for Iodine clock. C, Overlay of the Allen deviation for the iodine clock operating at NIST and at sea. In short time intervals, instability in a dynamic environment is similar to the laboratory. d, the clocks can maintain 10 ps holds for several hours and 1 ns for several days, demonstrating their potential as the basis for a picosecond-level timing network. credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07225-2

A team of physicists and engineers at Vector Atomic, a maker of navigation and communications equipment, has developed a new type of atomic clock that they claim is extremely accurate and robust. In his article published in the journal Naturethe group describes the factors that went into the creation of their new watch and how it performed during field tests aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean.

Bonnie Marlowe and Jonathan Hirschauer, both with MITER, published a News & Views article in the same issue of the magazine, outlining the need for ultra-precise atomic clocks and the work being done by the Vector Atomic team.

As the instruments used on ships have become more sophisticated, the technology behind them has increasingly relied on precise timing. For example, navigation uses radio systems that use GPS. In such systems, very small time inaccuracies when measuring signal propagation between satellites can lead to positioning errors of hundreds of meters, which can be of great importance if military ships are involved.

Ships currently rely on atomic clocks that are strong enough to operate while ships roll, but are not as accurate as atomic clocks used in research laboratories. In this new effort, the Vector Atomic team has created a watch to help bridge that gap.

The clock is based on the use of oscillating iodine molecules and weighs just 26kg, roughly the size of three shoeboxes – small enough to be used on any ship. The group claims that the clock is approximately 1,000 times more accurate than the clocks currently used on most ships.

In developing the watch, the team collaborated with the New Zealand Navy. They tested the watch on HMNZS Aotearoa as it carried out normal shipping operations for three weeks in the Pacific. Data from the experiments show that the clock is about as accurate as it is tested in the lab — keeping time to within 300 trillionths of a second every day.

The development team notes that they are continuing to work on the clock and hope to make it small enough to carry navigation satellites.

more information:
Jonathan D. Roslund et al., Light hours at sea, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07225-2

Bonnie LS Marlow et al., robust optical clocks promise stable timing in a portable package. Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-024-01022-7

Magazine information:
Nature

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