[time-nuts] Coming to a drive-way near you: Optical Lattice clocks

Michael Wouters michaeljwouters at gmail.com
Fri Feb 24 05:02:33 EST 2017


On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 10:27 AM, Bob Camp <kb8tq at n1k.org> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I agree with their premise that to be useful you need transportable clocks. I’m not quite sure
> that something the size (and weight) of a pickup truck is really transportable. Yes one can
> move it around (unlike a small mountain)  …. Transporting something like that from here to
> Europe and back *would* make the charges FedEx comes up with on a  40Kg box look
> cheap though :)
>
> Bob

I suspect that it's really only meant to be driven around to labs in
Europe with optical clocks, like LNE-SYRTE and NPL.
I think that you would repack it if you were shipping it overseas.

My one experience of something remotely like this was delivery of our
frequency comb (two full-height 19 inch racks plus the laser on a
large breadboard) from Germany to Australia. It was all working the
same day it was unpacked. But no UHV system of course.

The Chinese one is a bit simpler: it's a single-ion Paul trap, rather
than a lattice clock. Probably less control electronics are needed
too, so maybe it's a bit more mobile.

Cheers
Michael


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