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26 Apr 2024

NPL working with ESA to SWAP all the clocks

The National Physical Laboratory is working with the European Space Agency to develop portable optical atomic clocks for the next generation of Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) satellites.

NPL's optical stabilising reference cavity was developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) and is designed to lock laser frequency for future high-precision space instruments. The cavity acts like a tuning fork and prevents a laser from drifting. - NPL

PNT technology, such as GPS and Europe’s Galileo, currently relies on atomic clocks that use microwave radiation to lock on to particular stable atomic microwave absorption reference frequencies. But in the past decade, optical atomic clocks - where lasers interrogate and lock on to optical atomic absorptions at much higher frequencies – have emerged as a more robust alternative to microwave-based technology.

In light of this, NPL is developing robust, portable optical clocks with low size, weight and power (SWAP) which are more accurate and reliable than microwave systems. A key feature of the new clocks will be NPL’s cubic optical cavity technology, which acts as a compact opto-electronic clock control unit and maintains the frequency stabilisation of the clock’s lasers.

“The NPL cubic cavity is a critical part of our aims to deliver atomic timekeeping that underpins the technologies that are part of our everyday lives,” Cyrus Larijani, strategic business development manager for Space and Nuclear at NPL, said in a statement.

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