HORACE: A compact cold atom clock for Galileo

Abstract

HORACE (HOrloge à Refroidissement d’Atomes en Cellule = clock based on atoms cooled from vapour cell) is a compact cold caesium atom clock developed in SYRTE at Paris Observatory. This clock can operate both on ground and in microgravity environment. Design of HORACE is based on isotropic light cooling, allowing performing the whole clock sequence (cooling, atomic preparation, Ramsey interrogation and detection) at the same place. Compared to more conventional cold atom clocks such as atomic fountains, the use of isotropic light cooling simplifies both the optical part of the setup and the detection sequence, and leads to a drastic size reduction of the physics package. Very good short-term performances have been demonstrated at SYRTE since relative frequency instability of 2.2 × 10 −13 τ −1/2 has been obtained. Optimization of the long term stability is still under progress and current results show relative frequency instability around 3 × 10 −15 in 10 4 s of integration. With these performances, HORACE appears as a good candidate both for Galileo’s ground segment clock and for onboard Galileo clock.