Frequency Electronics, a global name for designing, developing and manufacturing high precision timing, frequency generation and RF control products for space and terrestrial applications, is developing a family of next-generation pulsed laser Rubidium atomic clocks. They claim, these new clocks will provide significantly improved performance compared to what is currently available and will include configurations for military space, terrestrial tactical applications and the commercial market.
Dr Thomas McClelland, FEI’s Chief Scientist commented that it is gratifying to see this technology move from their lab into product development. The key technical challenges essential to producing high performance, high reliability and cost-effective pulsed laser atomic clock have largely been solved and what remains now is to complete product design. The application of pulsed laser technology and its associated control electronics has proven to be a breakthrough. They envision that their resulting products will have at least 10x better time stability enabled by this technology. This represents a significant accomplishment.
FEI CEO Stan Sloane further added that they are extremely excited to be embarking on this development, which began originally in 2016 with a contract from the government to design a Pulsed Optically-pumped Rubidium Atomic Clock (POPRAFS). That work has continued and the key technical risks have now been addressed such that they can commit to finalizing development and then moving quickly to production. This family of atomic clocks will be a game-changer in the global atomic clock market, a multi-hundred-million-dollar opportunity set.
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