For Fridtjof Nansen, 13 April 1895 started well. Six days earlier, the Norwegian explorer had set a new record for the closest approach to the North Pole, and now he was moving quickly over unbroken sea ice toward Cape Fligely and home. But then came a sickening realization: In his eagerness to break camp, he had forgotten to wind the chronometers. He had lost track of precise time, and thus the ability to track his longitude.
Although Nansen couldn’t have lost his position by more than a few minutes, it forced him to take a circuitously conservative route to avoid being swept into the North Atlantic. His expedition thus had to endure a hungry winter, camped on an unknown shore. Not until June the following year did he encounter other explorers and learn his true position—on Cape Felder, in Franz Josef Land.
Today, anyone with a smartphone can determine their time and position with ease. Satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) broadcast clock signals across the globe with uncertainties below 100 nanoseconds, or one ten-millionth of a second. These time signals carry the information needed for precise navigation: Because radio waves travel at exactly 0.299,792,458 meters per nanosecond (apart from minuscule variations due to refraction in the atmosphere), comparing signals from different satellites makes it possible to determine a position within a few meters. That’s why GPS has transformed seismic monitors, drone delivery, and many other applications.
But GPS can’t solve all timing problems. Central to the system are atomic clocks carried on each satellite. Although these clocks are extremely stable (and regularly calibrated by comparing them with ground-based atomic clocks at national standards laboratories), there are many ways to go wrong when transferring timing information to the user—jamming, spoofing, unintentional interference, solar storms, even reflections from buildings. But what if we could put this precision directly in the hands of the user by shrinking the atomic clock itself so it could work inside the GPS receiver? Would we, like Nansen, then want to carry our very best clocks with us?
In research now published at Physical Review Letters, we show that such a mobile clock is possible. We hope to make one soon.
The core of an atomic clock is a vacuum chamber containing a thin cloud of vaporized metal, usually cesium. Atoms in the vapor resonate at a precise frequency, meaning that their electrons will accept energy only from photons having just the right amount of it. If those photons have a little too much or too little energy—that is, if their frequency is a little too high or too low—the absorption falls off markedly. This is the key feature of an atomic clock.
Read more: Build the World’s Smallest Atomic Clock
