Celebrating 60 years of atomic timekeeping

Wednesday 3 June 2015 marks the 60th anniversary of atomic timekeeping, a revolutionary
technology which underpins much that we take for granted in the modern world. From global
communications and satellite navigation to the systems behind our transportation and financial
networks, the maintenance of a stable and accurate time scale is essential for our society to
function.

Louis Essen (right) with the original caesium

atomic clock in-situ in the NPL Standards
Division (1962)

In an attempt to move timekeeping away

from traditional definitions expressed in
terms of the period of the Earth's rotation,
physicist Louis Essen spent the early 1950s
developing his pioneering atomic clock at
the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). On
3 June 1955, Essen started to control the
UK radio time signals using atomic units of
time derived from the atomic clock,
effectively marking what Essen called "the death of the astronomical second and the birth of atomic
time."

Essen showed that atoms, which have a set of discrete energy levels, could provide a much more
stable reference time interval. By using microwaves to excite electrons from one energy level to
another within atoms of caesium, Essen was able to stabilise the microwaves at a precise and
reproducible frequency. Much like a grandfather clock depends on the swinging of a pendulum,
Essen's prototype atomic clock relied on this underlying frequency to mark the passing of time.

Although different elements have since been used in other types of atomic clock, the caesium clock
has remained the fundamental standard of time and frequency. Since 1967, the SI second has been
defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition
between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Such high levels of accuracy may seem unnecessary in everyday life, but in reality the clocks in train
stations, video recorders and mobile phones all use atomic time to ensure they are perfectly
synchronised. When it comes to more specialised functions, atomic time is also necessary for
banking, controlling air traffic, maintaining the Internet, synchronising the distribution of electricity
and the Global Positioning System (GPS) for navigation. Without the invention of atomic
timekeeping, none of these things would be possible.

Since Essen's pioneering work, the accuracy of atomic clocks has steadily improved by a factor of 10
or so every decade. The major improvement in the accuracy of caesium clocks has been achieved
through the use of laser-cooled caesium atoms in complex laboratory clocks known as caesium
fountains. NPL's current primary clock, the caesium fountain NPL-CsF2, contributes to the generation
of the international time scale UTC and is the reference for the UK's national time scale UTC(NPL).
It is over 300,000 times more precise than Essen's original clock, which is now housed in the Science
Museum in London.

"It is hard to overstate the significance of Louis Essen's contribution," said Professor Patrick Gill at
NPL. "Although other researchers were experimenting with atomic timekeeping at roughly the same
time, it was Essen who first developed the working prototype that has come to define the digital
age."

As the UK's home of precise timing, NPL is continuing to develop ways to measure time ever more
accurately and improve the performance of its atomic clocks. The next generation of these devices -
optical clocks based on laser-cooled trapped ions or neutral atoms - should achieve accuracies
equivalent to losing or gaining no more than one second in the age of the universe. Efforts to develop
accurate atomic clocks which can be used outside of the lab to widen their applications are also
under way.

Dr Leon Lobo, Strategic Business Development Manager for Time & Frequency at NPL, said: "As well
as continuing to improve accuracy, we are also looking to miniaturise atomic clocks. By making
accurate atomic clocks portable, we could unlock the benefits of precise timing for countless
applications. In the near future, we could use miniature atomic clocks to send unhackable
communications, help timestamp high frequency trades, improve deep space navigation, and
eventually integrate them into smartphones, increasing data transfer rates in communications
networks."

Find out more about the history of atomic timekeeping at NPL

Find out about NPL's current Time & Frequency work

Contact: Leon Lobo