[time-nuts] NIST Seminar summary

[David Bengtson]

Well, now that I'm back from Boulder, I should post some comments on
the shindig.

Seminar

http://tf.nist.gov/seminars/TFSeminar2012/Seminar_37.html

This was definitely a professional level seminar, as evidenced by the
cost and the topics. I've been lurking on the Time Nuts for a while,
as I have some work related interests in precision frequency and low
phase noise, but in no way can be considered an expert in time and
frequency metrology.

The event was at the NIST Boulder facility, and was well run. Most of
the speakers were actively working on the topics that they presented,
so the technical expertise was there. The day's were long, as you
could tell. One of the highlights for me was the discussion on TheoH,
which seems to be a measurement to use instead of the Allan deviation.
It seems to provide information further out in time for the same
record lengths, and so I'll have to take another look at some data I
have with TheoH instead of the Allan deviation.

One of the other interesting things was the presentation on the Al+
optical clock.  They claimed to be able to jack up the optical bench
that this clock is on, and measure the frequency offset caused by the
change in height. They're getting time accuracies down in the 10e-18
level! I"m waiting for a Time nut to start looking at Optical comb
techniques. Who's going to be first?

Had dinner Tuesday night with the other local Time Nuts, as well as
John and Magnus. That was entertaining, with Tom and Skip providing
some entertaining/depressing stories of the surplus marketplace. John
had a Timepod there, which seems like a pretty useful box for digital
measurements.

Dave