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Joint Conference of the European Frequency and Time Forum and IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (EFTF/IFCS)

Towards large scale metrological fibre network

Anthony Bercy, Olivier Lopez, Fabio Stefani, Christian Chardonnet, Anne Amy‐Klein, Paul-Éric Pottie, Giorgio Santarelli

Published Jul 1, 2013• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In the frame of the REFIMEVE+ project, aiming at disseminating an optical frequency standard to more than 20 laboratories in France, we present the progress made towards a metrological fibre wide-area network.
DOI
10.1109/eftf-ifc.2013.6702217

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SummaryWe report the performance of REFIMEVE, a national metrological network of optical fiber links, using the academic fiber network. It enables the coherent dissemination of time and/or frequency reference signals from LNE-SYRTE to around 15 labs and more than 30 in the future. We will show the latest extensions of the network in the Paris urban area and all over France, the architecture required for such al network, and the progress in terms of robustness and uptime. We will also present some applications to precision measurements, in particular ultra-high-resolution molecular spectroscopy in the mid-infrared spectral range.
High-resolution time and frequency transfer between remote laboratories are of major interest for many fundamentals applications, such as tests of general relativity or temporal variation of fundamental constants performed by comparing clocks signals. We report on the progress of a metrological fiber network on the French territory, with extensions to Europe, which aims to provide an ultra-stable frequency signal to around 20 laboratories. This network is based on the dissemination of an ultra-stable signal using optical links through the academic fiber internet network. As a first step, we have demonstrated robust links of up to 1480 km with stability at 104s and accuracy below 10−19.
The transfer of ultra-stable frequencies between distant laboratories is required by many applications from fundamental metrology to high-precision measurements. For that purpose, optical fibre links have been intensively studied over the last decade. They have demonstrated impressive results far beyond the GPS capabilities on distances up to 2000 km, thanks to an active compensation of the fiber propagation noise.Up to now, optical links has been mainly implemented between two labs, when future applications will require the development of metrological fiber networks. Towards this goal, we have developed a few techniques which allow us to distribute the ultrastable optical signal to many users simultaneously. We have designed repeater laser stations, which can be used to build a cascaded link or to distribute the ultrastable signal among two optical links [1]. These stations allow us also to compare the output end signals of two optical links. These versatile stations will be a key-component of the national metrological network currently being developed in France within the Refimeve+ project. To complete the network, we have demonstrated the extraction of the ultrastable signal from a main link and its seeding to a secondary link [2].Optical links are already been successfully used for clocks comparison. Recently we were able to compare the atomic clocks of the French and German National Metrology Institutes through two connected optical links of total length 1415-km [3]. We found that the two fully independent Sr lattice optical clocks at the two sites agreed to better than 5x10-17 limited only by the clocks uncertainties. A fractional statistical uncertainty of 3x10-17 was reached after only 1000 s averaging time, which is 10 times better, and more than four orders of magnitude faster than with any other existing frequency transfer method. The atomic fountain primary frequency standards from the two institutes were also compared and they were found to agree well within their combined uncertainties of a few 10-16 [4].