Optical time-frequency transfer across a free-space, three-node network

Bodine, Martha I.; Ellis, Jennifer L.; Swann, William C.; Stevenson, Sarah; Deschênes, Jean-Daniel; Hannah, Emily D.; Manurkar, Paritosh; Newbury, Nathan R.; Sinclair, Laura C.

doi:10.1063/5.0010704

Cited by 32 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…A team at NIST has developed an optical TWTFT (OTWTFT) technique [87] combining carrier and time-of-flight information, allowing phase-coherent averaging over the signal dropouts that occur inevitably due to atmospheric turbulence [132]. Using this technique, the NIST team has demonstrated sub-10 −18 frequency transfer uncertainty and sub-1 fs timing uncertainty at an averaging time of 1000 s in a 3-node network of two concatenated 14 km links [133]. Furthermore, they demonstrated OTWTFT to a flying drone with similar performance [134].…”

Section: Free Space-time and Frequency Linksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold Atoms in Space: Community Workshop Summary and Proposed Road-Map

Alonso,

Alpigiani,

Altschul

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We summarize the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible roadmap for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with ESA and national space and research funding agencies. research areas. As anticipated for a Europe-based event, about 80% of the registrations are from European countries, as seen in the lower right panel of Fig. 1, but there is also significant North American and Asian participation.This community provides the backbone for long-term planning and the support needed to see the challenging cold atom missions foreseen in the road-map through to their successful completions. The participants display an excellent and diverse mix of expertise, building an outstanding basis for the success of the workshop and the development of the corresponding road-map, which defines possible interim and long-term scientific goals and outlines technological milestones. Section 2 is an introduction to our document, Sections 3 to 5 discuss our main science themes, namely atomic clocks, Earth Observation and fundamental physics, Section 6 discusses the technology developments required before quantum sensors can be deployed in space, Section 7 summarises the discussions during the Workshop, and in Section 8 we outline the corresponding Community road-map.

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Section: Free Space-time and Frequency Linksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cold Atoms in Space: Community Workshop Summary and Proposed Road-Map

Alonso,

Alpigiani,

Altschul

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…In particular, to establish a globalscale network, it is essential to develop free-space time-frequency dissemination. On this path, previous work have achieved a distance up to a dozen kilometers 8,[20][21][22] in a mirror-folded configuration, which cannot meet the high demands required by future satellite-ground time-frequency dissemination.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The OFC optical phase locked to the USL is used as the carrier and reference signal of local sampling. Instead of keeping two terminals close and folding links with a remote flat mirror in the previous experiments 8,[20][21][22] , we physically separate the two terminals to a distance of 113 km. The folded configuration is convenient for link performance evaluation; however, the time-frequency signal has not actually been disseminated over a long distance physically.…”

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confidence: 99%

113 km Free-Space Time-Frequency Dissemination at the 19th Decimal Instability

Zhang

Shen

Guan

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Optical clock networks play important roles in various fields, such as precise navigation, redefinition of “second” unit, and gravitational tests. To establish a global-scale optical clock network, it is essential to disseminate time and frequency with a stability of 10^−19 over a long-distance free-space link. However, such attempts were limited to dozens of kilometers in mirror-folded configuration. Here, we take a crucial step toward future satellite-based time-frequency disseminations. By developing the key technologies, including high-power frequency combs, high-stability and high-efficiency optical transceiver systems, and efficient linear optical sampling, we demonstrate free-space time-frequency dissemination over two independent links with femtosecond time deviation, 3 × 10−19 at 10,000 s residual instability and 1.6 × 10^−20 ± 4.3 × 10^−19 offset. This level of the stability retains for an increased channel loss up to 89 dB. Our work can not only be directly used in ground-based application, but also firmly laid the groundwork for future satellite time-frequency dissemination.

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“…Principally, several point-to-point optical frequency transfer systems could be used to form a point-to-multiplepoint optical frequency transfer system, which will significantly increase the complexity of the system at the local site. Cascaded multiple systems can also provide the multiple-access capability such as comb-based two-way optical time-frequency transfer across a free-space channel by cascading two sets of free-space transceivers [30]. Moreover, free-space multiple-access radio frequency transfer by extracting the forward and backward signals has been demonstrated in [31].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Free-space point-to-multiplepoint optical frequency transfer with lens assisted integrated beam steering

Liang¹,

Xue²,

Cao³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We report on the realization of high-performance silica integrated two-dimensional lens assisted beam-steering (LABS) arrays along with the first-of-their-kind point-tomultiplepoint optical frequency transfer. The LABS equips with N antennas and has the capability to produce arbitrary number of output beams with different output angles with the simple control complexity. We demonstrate that the LABS has 16 scanning angles, which can support the access capability for the maximum of simultaneous 16 user nodes. The coaxial configuration for transmitting and receiving the light as a monolithic transceiver allows us to reduce the out-of-loop phase noise significantly. Finally, the LABS-based non-blocking point-to-multiplepoint indoor free-space optical frequency transfer links with 24 m and 50 m free-space links are shown. After being compensated for the free-space link up to 50 m, the fractional frequency instability of 4.5 × 10 −17 and 7.7 × 10 −20 at the averaging time of 1 s and 20,000 s, respectively, can be achieved. The present work proves the potential application of the 2D LABS in free-space optical time-frequency transfer and provides a guidance for developing a chip-scale optical time-frequency transfer system.

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Optical time-frequency transfer across a free-space, three-node network

Cited by 32 publications

References 37 publications

Cold Atoms in Space: Community Workshop Summary and Proposed Road-Map

Cold Atoms in Space: Community Workshop Summary and Proposed Road-Map

113 km Free-Space Time-Frequency Dissemination at the 19th Decimal Instability

Free-space point-to-multiplepoint optical frequency transfer with lens assisted integrated beam steering

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