[time-nuts] Antique Rb Standard - Thanks, Pictures, Parts Request, Question

[Attila Kinali]

On Sun, 29 Apr 2012 13:19:08 -0700
ed breya <eb at telight.com> wrote:

> If the Rb cell "drifted" enough (maybe if it was filled with water) 
> to de-tune the mechanical cavity resonator, it wouldn't work at all. 
> Only a small amount of the RF power in the cavity is coupled into the 
> Rb gas. The bandwidth of the Rb resonance is a fraction of a Hz (Q in 
> the millions), while the bandwidth of the cavity is probably 20-50 
> MHz, (Q may be up to 100).

Not quite true. While the theoretical line width of Rb is very small,
the line width of a Rb gas cell is in the range of 100Hz to 100kHz,
depending on the size of the cell, wall coatings, the buffer gas type,
the pressure and temperature.

			Attila Kinali

-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?