About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks
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A captivating, surprising history of timekeeping and how it has shaped our world. For thousands of years, people of all cultures have made and used clocks, from the city sundials of ancient Rome to the medieval water clocks of imperial China, hourglasses fomenting revolution in the Middle Ages, the Stock Exchange clock of Amsterdam in 1611, Enlightenment observatories in India, and the high-precision clocks circling the Earth on a fleet of GPS satellites that have been launched since 1978.
From Sundials to Atomic Clocks
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This volume, newly revised and updated, offers an unusually clear and accessible introduction to time — its measurement, historic methods of timekeeping, the uses of time information, and the role of time in science and technology. Beginning with a discussion of the nature of time, natural clocks, the relation of time and frequency, and the role of time in navigation, the authors then proceed to a fascinating treatment of man-made clocks and watches — from the sundials and waterclocks of ancient Egypt to today's amazingly precise atomic clocks
High Performance Clocks with Special Emphasis on Geodesy and Geophysics and Applications to Other Bodies of the Solar System
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This contributed volume arose from the idea of assembling scientists from space research and ground development, time transfer techniques and radio science missions, the time-frequency community, and both the geodesy-geophysics and solar system exploration communities. Such a fusion of diverse interests in these fields related to time measurement has rarely, if ever, been achieved. The topics covered in these papers include clocks, time transfer, technology, and the applications of high-precision clocks in Earth Sciences, Fundamental Physics, Astrophysics, and Solar System exploration. This book will be of major interest to all those involved in the implementation and utilization of space-based high precision timing for a wide range of applications.
On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping
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This work is a history of technology. It surveys the development of the mechanical clock from prehistory to the modern era in a compact, approachable text suitable for the general reader or for an undergraduate course text. The author seeks to answer the following questions: How did horologists achieve greater precision and ease of use for chronometers? How did this advancement drive the modern scientific mind-set and the timekeeping regimes that order our daily lives today?
The Quantum Beat: Principles and Applications of Atomic Clocks
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This edition retains the essentially didactic approach to the treatment of the development of atomic clocks in the first edition, but brings up to date the extraordinary developments in recent years, culminating in clocks based on quantum resonance at optical frequency in individual ions confined in miniature electromagnetic traps.
The Quantum Physics of Atomic Frequency Standards
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"Up-to-Date Coverage of Stable and Accurate Atomic Frequency Standards The Quantum Physics of Atomic Frequency Standards: Recent Developments covers advances in atomic frequency standards (atomic clocks) from the last several decades. It explains the use of various techniques, such as laser optical pumping, coherent population trapping, laser cooling, and electromagnetic and optical trapping, in the implementation of classical microwave and optical atomic frequency standards. It provides up-to-date, in-depth view of the vast improvements to atomic clocks that have occurred in the last 25 years.
Rubidium Atomic Clock
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The Rubidium atomic clock (Rb) is the workhorse of the satellite navigation systems of which GPS is now a household name. With just the tap of a few keys, drivers and navigators all over the world are able to reach their destination effortlessly with high precision. People are now curious to know what makes this possible. Hence, the need to explain in simplistic terms the Rb atomic clocks that are onboard these satellite navigation systems because no good satellite navigation system is possible without such clocks.But why only Rb atomic clocks when far better and exotic atomic clocks are available? The reasons are as simple as that they are slim, low in weight, easy to build inexpensively. They are also used in numerous military applications such as secure communications, electronic warfare, command and control, telemetry and navigation. Besides, they are used in the measurements of the variation in fine-structure constant, test of relativity, precise spectroscopy and scientific research.This book details the history of time keeping and the chronological development of the Rb atomic clocks, with special focus on the physics Package that accounts for the actual performance of the clock. Researchers and industrialists will find that producing such clocks is relatively simple and inexpensive.
The Strontium Molecular Lattice Clock
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This thesis describes how the rich internal degrees of freedom of molecules can be exploited to construct the first "clock" based on ultracold molecules, rather than atoms. By holding the molecules in an optical lattice trap, the vibrational clock is engineered to have a high oscillation quality factor, facilitating the full characterization of frequency shifts affecting the clock at the hertz level. The prototypical vibrational molecular clock is shown to have a systematic fractional uncertainty at the 14th decimal place, matching the performance of the earliest optical atomic lattice clocks. As part of this effort, deeply bound strontium dimers are coherently created, and ultracold collisions of these Van der Waals molecules are studied for the first time, revealing inelastic losses at the universal rate. The thesis reports one of the most accurate measurements of a molecule's vibrational transition frequency to date. The molecular clock lays the groundwork for explorations into terahertz metrology, quantum chemistry, and fundamental interactions at atomic length scales.
