[time-nuts] Re: Want to build your own optical clock?

[Magnus Danielson]

Paul,

When I did the NIST Time and Frequency Seminars, one of the lab evens 
was the MOT. It was really instructive and fun to get the cooling going, 
and we where able to cool both Rb-87 and Rb-85. Looking at a spot and 
realize it is really really cool atoms is cool. Only time that was 
surpassed, was when I saw the cool atoms in NPLs cesium fountain, as 
these are among the few that contribute to actual TAI.

Having a MOT is tempting. However, I may need to consider my priorities. 
I mean, what gear get's thrown out???

Cheers,
Magnus

On 2024-01-25 00:13, paul swed via time-nuts wrote:
> Skip it was interesting to take a look at what you sent. Sure looks like
> some students are going to have fun with cold atoms.
> In some of the earlier threads there was a discussion on failure modes and
> the laser was most likely. This had me thinking about the old cesiums I
> have.
> Assuming they are on average 40 years old, then the current life of the
> units are some 350,000 hours. Granted I don't run them 24 X 7.
> But it at least sets a number to what we are used to at some level.
> Not very scientific but a fun fact.
> Regards
> Paul
> WB8TSL
>
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2024 at 5:47 PM Skip Withrow via time-nuts <
> time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
>
>> Infleqtion will have a booth at Photonics West in San Francisco Jan. 27 -
>> Feb. 1.
>> They are working on all kinds of quantum physics stuff, but have two things
>> of particular interest to time-nuts.
>> 1. Tiqker - A Rb cold atom clock in a 3U rack mount package.  Pretty
>> limited production at this point, but something to watch.  I think there is
>> another company in CA working on a similar product.
>>
>> 2. desqtopMOT - geared towards educational institutions, but suitable for
>> draining your bank account and free time. Explore, educate, and empower the
>> workforce of tomorrow with the desqtopMOT cold atom platform — Infleqtion
>> <https://www.infleqtion.com/desqtopmot>
>>
>> Regards,
>> Skip Withrow
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