[time-nuts] Re: Creating a D.I.Y Rubidium Atomic Clock

[Richard Karlquist]

I had a consulting assignment to design a 6.8 GHz synthesizer for a Cold
Atom Rb around 2019.  It was kind of just like Jim said including the
three post docs, although AFAIK, it was just a frequency source to use
for whatever; they never mentioned it going to space.  IIRC, it was
optically pumped by lasers, and there was no absorption cell.  Much
greater degree of difficulty than the traditional Rb gas cell standard. 
However, a whole lot more stable/accurate.  The synthesizer I designed,
I would say, was the "easy" part.  However, the OCXO cost something like
$5,000.

---
Rick Karlquist
N6RK 

On 2023-06-07 16:56, Lux, Jim via time-nuts wrote:

> I know a bunch of people on the Cold Atom Lab project, which is making Bose Einstein Condensates on ISS - they run both K and Rb (I don't know if it's in the same cavity).  But if you need contacts on how they made theirs, I can probably find some people to talk to.
> 
> That project was described as "take a lab bench full of equipment and three post docs and turn it into a box you can take to the space station, push a button, and make BECs"  It was, as these things are, an adventure.
> 
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> at 8:26 PM, Richard Karlquist via time-nuts <time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
> 
> In a former life, I was on the design team of a mini rubidium standard
> at Hewlett-Packard.  We built some working prototypes before it was
> cancelled.  It was going to have the model number 10816.  I was the RF
> person, but I worked very closely with the other team members.
> Remembering what we had to go through to make "glassware", it is
> inconceivable that you could do that as a "home brew" project.  And this
> was the same HP facility that already made the 5065 rubidium standard.
> The best you could hope to do is to start with a commercial "physics
> package" as we called it, and make your own electronics for it.  Reading
> books about how rubidium standards work, etc is fine, but again, you
> can't home brew the glassware.
> 
> ---
> Rick Karlquist
> N6RK