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Lecture notes in electrical engineering

Progress Towards a Miniaturized Mercury Ion Clock for Space Application

Hao Liu, Yi-He Chen, Bibo Yan, Ge Liu, Lei She

Published Jan 1, 2020• 7 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1007/978-981-15-3711-0_49

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Abstract The mercury ion microwave clock is considered to be one of the leading candidates for new generation satellite navigation atomic clocks due to its excellent long-term frequency stability, extremely low frequency drift rate, high reliability and good potential for miniaturization. In recent years, the performance and maturity of the space mercury ion microwave clock have improved rapidly, and the reported long-term stability results are mostly in low 10 − 15 level. In this article, we present a compact prototype of mercury ion microwave clock aiming to spaceborne applications with the long-term stability of 10 − 16 . By regulating the physical effects contributing to the clock transition frequency shifts, the clock maintains a white frequency noise Allan deviation of 2.8×10 − 13 / τ 1/2 even with the averaging time τ over 10 5 s and achieves the long-term stability of 6.3 × 10 − 16 for averaging times of 200000 s. The space mercury ion microwave clock with such level performance will benefit the Global Navigation Satellite Systems and a wide range of space science and missions.
Abstract Optical clocks have well surpassed the frequency stability performance of microwave clocks. They have been mainly limited to tabletop setups and large rack-mount systems. Miniaturizing optical clocks will make the new technology and capability more ubiquitously applied to applications from navigation to fundamental science. Here we aim to develop a miniature space optical clock (mSOC) with the size of a compact microwave clock and capable of achieving a short-term stability of 10−14 τ −1/2 and noise floor of 10−16. In this paper, we will describe the mSOC concept, discuss the experimental setup, and present recent results. We have demonstrated trapping single ions and characterized the ion lifetime in a 16-cc trap tube. The trap tube is completely sealed off without any active pump. We also constructed a clock laser referenced to a small ultra-low expansion reference cavity at a low 10−14 level and observed the clock transition.