https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00021584
A cold atom clock in absence of gravity
1
BNM-LPTF, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France
2
Laboratoire de l'Horloge Atomique, Btiment 221,
Université Paris-sud, 91405
Orsay, France
3
Laboratoire Kastler Brossel,
Département de Physique de l'École Normale Supérieure,
24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris, France
Corresponding author: a salomon@physique.ens.fr
Received:
10
June
1998
Accepted:
18
June
1998
Published online: 12 July 2013
We describe the operation of a cold atom clock in reduced gravity. We have
recorded the
cesium hyperfine resonance signal at a frequency near 9.2 GHz
in the 
gravity environment produced by jet plane parabolic flights.
With a
resonance width of 7 Hz, the device operated in a regime which is not
accessible on
earth. In the much lower gravity level of a satellite, our cold cesium
clock would
outperform the fountains with a potential accuracy of
. This
experiment paves the way to unprecedented performance in space applications
such as
tests of general relativity, global time dissemination, astronomy and geodesy.
PACS: 32.80.Pj – Optical cooling of atoms; trapping / 06.30.Ft – Time and frequency
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 1998
