Quick search Find article
Quick search
Find article

Comparison between frequency standards in Europe and the USA at the 10−15 uncertainty level

A Bauch1, J Achkar2, S Bize2, D Calonico3, R Dach4, R Hlavać5,8, L Lorini3, T Parker6, G Petit7, D Piester1, K Szymaniec5 and P Uhrich2

Show affiliations


Istituto Elettrotecnico Nazionale Galileo Ferraris (IEN), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Laboratoire National de Métrologie et d'Essais—Observatoire de Paris/Systèmes de Référence Temps Espace (OP) and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) operate cold-atom based primary frequency standards which are capable of realizing the SI second with a relative uncertainty of 1 × 10−15 or even below. These institutes performed an intense comparison campaign of selected frequency references maintained in their laboratories during about 25 days in October/November 2004. Active hydrogen maser reference standards served as frequency references for the institutes' fountain frequency standards. Three techniques of frequency (and time) comparisons were employed. Two-way satellite time and frequency transfer (TWSTFT) was performed in an intensified measurement schedule of 12 equally spaced measurements per day. The data of dual-frequency geodetic Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers were processed to yield an ionosphere-free linear combination of the code observations from both GPS frequencies, typically referred to as GPS TAI P3 analysis. Last but not least, the same GPS raw data were separately processed, allowing GPS carrier-phase (GPS CP) based frequency comparisons to be made. These showed the lowest relative frequency instability at short averaging times of all the methods. The instability was at the level of 1 part in 1015 at one-day averaging time using TWSTFT and GPS CP. The GPS TAI P3 analysis is capable of giving a similar quality of data after averaging over two days or longer. All techniques provided the same mean frequency difference between the standards involved within the 1σ measurement uncertainty of a few parts in 1016. The frequency differences between the three fountains of IEN (IEN-CsF1), NPL (NPL-CsF1) and OP (OP-FO2) were evaluated. Differences lower than the 1σ measurement uncertainty were observed between NPL and OP, whereas the IEN fountain deviated by about 2σ from the other two fountains.


PACS

06.20.fb Standards and calibration

06.30.Ft Time and frequency

94.80.+g Instrumentation for aeronomy and magnetospheric studies

Subjects

Instrumentation and measurement

Plasma physics

Environmental and Earth science

Dates

Issue 1 (February 2006)

Received 22 September 2005

Published 22 December 2005



  1. Comparison between frequency standards in Europe and the USA at the 10−15 uncertainty level

    A Bauch et al 2006 Metrologia 43 109

  2. The thin-film equation: recent advances and some new perspectives

    Jürgen Becker and Günther Grün 2005 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 17 S291

  3. An embedding technique for the solution of coupled Riccati equations

    P Enders and O Schmidtmann 1992 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 25 1981

  4. A generalized Lie derivative and homothetic or Killing vectors in the Geroch-Held-Penrose formalism

    Garry Ludwig and S Brian Edgar 2000 Class. Quantum Grav. 17 1683

  5. Charge transfer and target excitation in H+-Na(3s) collisions (2-20 keV)

    F Aumayr et al 1987 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys. 20 2025

  6. A comment on the calculation of atomic energy levels in LS coupling using relativistic radial integrals

    K G Dyall 1985 J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Phys. 18 L175

  7. A differentiation formula for spherical Bessel functions

    J Boersma and M L Glasser 2005 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 38 1687

  8. Compactness of the space of causal curves

    Keye Martin 2006 Class. Quantum Grav. 23 1241

  9. Spin-2 fields on Minkowski space near spacelike and null infinity

    Helmut Friedrich 2003 Class. Quantum Grav. 20 101

  10. Effects of whole-body mechanical stimulation at double the heart rate on the blood pressure waveform in rats

    H Hsiu et al 2006 Physiol. Meas. 27 131

Users also read

What's this?
This innovative new feature generates a list of articles 'also read' by other users based on them reading the original article. Article abstracts citations and references are all considered and weighted accordingly. We hope that this will help you find relevant papers for your research.

  1. Evaluation of the primary frequency standard NPL-CsF1
  2. Combination of TWSTFT and GNSS for accurate UTC time transfer
  3. Time transfer with nanosecond accuracy for the realization of International Atomic Time
More

View by subject




Export








Please login to access our web services, or create an account if you don't yet have one.

You must have cookies enabled in your web browser to be able to login.

Username
Password

Forgotten your password? Get a new one here.