[time-nuts] You can build a fountain from the things you find at home...

[EWKehren at aol.com]

Having only been on the list little over two years I may revisit a subject  
covered extensively in the past. With all the know how and dead HP Cs 
tubes,  would it not make more sense to explore rejuvenating Cs tubes and look at 
ways  to improve its performance. I have the innards of two tubes on my 
window sill  and I could envisioning cutting one or both end caps off to access 
oven and Ion  pump for rework. I do not think it will screw up the 
remaining alignment.  Compared to Fountain or Maser it would make a lot more members 
happy, and meet  my objective of KISS (keep it simple stupid). For the 
record all my Cs tubes are  FTS so I would not benefit from it.
Bert Kehren
 
 
In a message dated 9/27/2011 4:40:15 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org writes:

On  27/09/11 22:23, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> In  
message<CAD2JfAgqBOEG-iyb5z2_RbJuLdj7SbVC5bofPnTK45RjeSrBvQ at mail.gmail.com>
>  , paul swed writes:
>
>> Boy I have to go back and check. I  thought fountains used lasers and 
such to
>> slow the atoms  down.
>
> They do.  And a microwave field.
>
>  But I still think it is easier to make work than the state selection  
magnets
> in a CS.
>
> Of course, there's also the  laser-based cesium to consider.
>

I agree fully. The state  selection magnets (Stern-Gerlach experiment) 
needs to provide a strong  gradient field which may be hard to build for 
the amateur. Building  working RF section, vacuum assembly, oven I rate 
as simpler. Still lot of  work to do.

Laser based state-selection and state-detection would  indeed be 
possible, and move the challenges to the optical  bench.

One possible aspect to the laser based state-selection and  
state-detection is that the target could be another oven, such that  
alternating direction cycling can be used. This addresses the  
phase-shift issue between the arms in the RF assembly, assuming  
sufficient stability otherwise. The same issue would not be as dominant  
in the  fountain.

Cheers,
Magnus

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