Optical Flywheel for Yb+ Ion Clock

The laser has commercial value as a part of optical Yb+ clock system. Timekeeping in commercial GPS satellites, national time references, and national power grids may benefit significantly from the clocks created using the laser. In addition, critical enhancements for advanced synchronous wireline and wireless communication smart networks from the core to the edges may be realized. Among others are academic research, test and measurement, and metrology applications. For example, high performance atomic frequency standards and clocks have been always an integral part of the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN), responsible for communication, navigation, tracking, as well as related sciences. The performance attributes of atomic frequency references and clocks are stability and accuracy. For most applications, particularly in a two-way link architecture, only stability is required. For greater autonomy and strict one-way navigation system, an accurate clock (i.e. one with a precisely known rate) will be beneficial, as it does not need calibration. Aside from DSN applications, precision frequency standards are used for a wide spectrum of NASA space-based science experiments in astrophysics, planetary physics, space science, Earth science, and tests of fundamental physics.

The laser source will be the best product available for applications requiring tunable ultra-high spectral purity in the C- and L-band ranges and beyond. The laser source's combination of high agility, small size, robust packaging, superior spectral noise characteristics, and lower cost of production will beat the foreseeable competition across all performance specifications. Potential customers include not only the oil and gas giants (Exxon/Mobile, Chevron, Halliburton, Anadarko, British Petroleum, Schlumberger, Royal Dutch Shell, etc.) and fiber optic sensor system integrators and emerging adopters (Sensa, Atlas, Ocean Optics, Honeywell, Xarion, Weatherford, Google, etc.), but also the equivalent of fiber optic communication system corporations (Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Ciena, etc.), LIDAR developers (LGS Innovations, Raytheon, Zephir, Bridger Photonics, etc.), and possibly medical laser system players (Syneron-Candela, Novadaq Technologies Inc., AngioDynamics Inc., PhotMedex Inc., Lumenis Ltd., BIOLASE Inc., etc.) More »