The caesium resonator as a standard of frequency and time

Abstract

The construction, operation, and testing of the standard are described. The resonance employed is that due to the hyperfine splitting of caesium, having a frequency of approximately 9192 Mc/s. The transitions between the two atomic states F, m f (4,0) and F, m F (3, 0) are detected in an atomic-beam chamber, in which the length of the transition region is 47 cm, giving a width of resonance, at half deflexion, of 350 cycles, and a standard deviation of setting to the peak of the resonance of ± l c/s . It is shown that the geometrical parameters of the beam chamber such as slit widths, alinement of the beam, and shape of the pole-pieces of the deflecting magnets are relatively unimportant, and that other parameters, including the pressure in the beam chamber, the temperature of the oven, from which the caesium atoms are evaporated, and the radio-frequency power exciting the transitions can be varied throughout wide limits without causing changes in resonant frequency exceeding 1 part in 10 10 . A unidirectional magnetic field is applied over the transition region to remove the field-dependent resonant lines of the Zeeman pattern from the central line which depends on the field to only a second-order extent. It has been found that a satisfactory resonance is obtained with a field as low as 0.05 Oe at which the total effect of the field on the frequency is only 1 c/s. The dependence of the frequency on the phase conditions in the two-cavity resonators carrying the exciting field is studied, and it is concluded that the phases can be made sufficiently close to enable the frequency to be defined with a precision of ± 1 part in 10 10 . The resonator is used as a passive instrument to calibrate the quartz clocks, usually at intervals of a few days; and it is estimated that the clocks calibrated in this way provide at all times the atomic unit of frequency and time interval with a standard deviation of ± 2 parts in 10 10 . The quartz clocks are also calibrated in terms of astronomical time and the results are compared for the period from June 1955 to June 1956. For operational purposes the frequency of the resonance was taken as 9 192 631 830 c/s which was the value obtained in terms of the unit of uniform astronomical time made available by the Royal Greenwich Observatory in June 1955. The value is being determined in terms of the second of ephemeris time, which has now been adopted by the International Committee of Weights and Measures as the unit of time, but to obtain the accuracy required the comparison must be extended over a long interval in view of the difficulties associated with the astronomical measurements.