A high performance Rb atomic clock

Abstract

Compared to other types of atomic clocks, spectral lamp-pumped Rb atomic clock offers the best combination of frequency stability, volume, weight, power consumption, price and robustness for many commercial and military applications. This advantage allowed accelerating greatly the development of state-of-the-art spectral lamp-pumped Rb atomic clock. The Rb atomic clock is widely used in satellite system, such as GPS, Galileo and so on. In Spaceon, the research and development of high performance Rb clock was started five years ago. The temperature coefficient of the whole system is 3.5×10 -14 /°C (0°C to 10°C). A narrow linewidth of 405 Hz is obtained. The Rb atomic clock exhibits a frequency drift of 4.37×10 -14 /day. in 18 days, a high frequency stability of 5×10 -13 at 10 second integration time and for longer than 40 000 seconds.