Passive Hydrogen Maser teardown!

[5065AGuru]

Just added "update 5" to http://www.leapsecond.com/maser/

It gives details on "digging down" to the cavity of the Maser.

Lots of PIX! 

Cheers!

Corby

[5065AGuru]

Just added "update 6" to http://www.leapsecond.com/maser/

It gives details on removing and opening  the cavity of the Maser.

Lots of PIX! 

Here is the "eye candy" shot of the storage bulb!


Cheers!

Corby

[dietert1]

Your interesting pictures reminded me of my last physics project. That was building an infrared optical frequency standard using a CO2 laser stabilized by a large OsO4 absorption cell, at 30 THz. The project was abandonded without completion after in 1989 the physics nobel prize went for the development of atomic traps.
Funds got redirected to trap research. Guess there are results by now.



Regards, Dieter

[ch_scr]

That video had nice glory shots of the laboratory 
For a more in depth technical presentation, I can recommend this from the same researcher,

held at the BIPM conference regarding the redefinition of the SI constants (26th CGPM)

[5065AGuru]

Find update 7 here:

http://www.leapsecond.com/maser/UPDATE7.pdf

Cheers,

Corby

[notfaded1]

Sweet Corby... I missed this!  It's been busy at work.  Any recent updates?

Bill

[rubidium]

Rather amazing work! You gotta have real stones to take on an effort like this! 

[5065AGuru]

After some work, including adding an oven to the vacuum chamber, I was able to take some measurements.
Unfortunately For some reason I cannot get the cavity to tune properly at vacuum and at the correct temperature. Seems like the loaded cavity arrangement is very sensitive to changes. I did evaluate several new varactors and could get a proper range of tuning but the center frequency could not be obtained!
Put the project to the side for a bit to regroup.

Cheers,

Corby