Microwave Leakage Induced Frequency Shifts in the Primary Frequency Standards NIST-F1 and IEN-CSF1

Published

December 1, 2006

Author(s)

F Levi, Jon H. Shirley, Steven R. Jefferts, Davide Calonico, Thomas P. Heavner, Dai Yu

Abstract

In atomic fountain style primary frequency standards the atoms are ideally subjected to microwave fields resonant with the ground-state hyperfine splitting only during the two Ramsey pulses of Ramsey?s separated oscillatory field measurement scheme. As a practical matter however stray microwave fields can be present which shift the frequency of the Ramsey fringe and therefore adversely affect the accuracy of the standard. We investigate these uncontrolled stray fields here and show that the frequency errors can be measured and indeed even the location within the standard determined by the behavior of the measured frequency with respect to microwave power in the Ramsey cavity.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control

Volume

53

Issue

12

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

atomic clock, frequency standard, microwave leakage

Citation

Levi, F. , Shirley, J. , Jefferts, S. , Calonico, D. , Heavner, T. and Yu, D. (2006), Microwave Leakage Induced Frequency Shifts in the Primary Frequency Standards NIST-F1 and IEN-CSF1, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=50158 (Accessed October 14, 2025)