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

Published

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

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 May 5, 2024)
Created December 1, 2006, Updated February 17, 2017