Synchronization of Distant Optical Clocks at the Femtosecond Level
By J. Deschênes, L. Sinclair, F. Giorgetta, William C. Swann, Esther Baumann, H. Bergeron, M. Cermak, Ian Coddington, Nathan R. Newbury. 2015
148 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The use of optical clocks/oscillators in future ultra-precise navigation, gravitational sensing, coherent arrays, and relativity experiments will require time comparison and synchronization over terrestrial or satellite free-space links. Here we demonstrate full unambiguous synchronization of two optical timescales across a free-space link. The time deviation between synchronized timescales is below 1 fs over durations from 0.1 s to 6500 s, despite atmospheric turbulence and kilometer-scale path length variations. Over several days, the time wander is 40 fs peak-to-peak. Our approach relies on the two-way reciprocity of a single-spatial-mode optical link, valid to below 225 attoseconds across a turbulent 4-km path. This femtosecond level of time-frequency transfer should enable optical networks using state-of-the-art optical clocks/oscillators.
Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8362d8e75619a3ec595ba51cfcc888dd0d155e18
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Citations in the corpus
- JILA SrI optical lattice clock with uncertainty of 2.0×10−18 (2019, background): “This has enabled their use in a variety of applications ranging from the proposed redefinition of the SI second [7, 8, 9], to searches for variations of fundamental constants [10, 11, 12, 13], and increased capabilities for positioning, navigation, and timing applications [14].”