Grating-based lattice optical clock (G-BLOC)

Precision timing is key to all aspects of modern infrastructure, from the national grid, to telecommunications, to financial trading, through to global, national, and individual navigation systems.

When we switch on our smartphones or satellite navigation systems, we are unconsciously using networked oscillators utilising the performance of current commercial atomic clocks. The exact sychronization of these oscillators is necessary to make much of today's technology work and it also underpins many precision experiments in research laboratories. As outlined in the UK Blackett Report on Global Navigation Satellite System dependencies, we are very dependent upon precision frequency and time transfer.

However, these signals do not have guaranteed security, either through their ownership (the GPS system is run by the US Air Force) or due to the vulnerability of the wireless signal to hacking or jamming. There is an urgent need for a UK source of clocks to protect core infrastructure. Additionally, the development of a step-change in the accuracy and stability of timing and frequency sources will drive new technologies, including faster telecoms and ever more secure communication protocols, precision navigation for autonomous transport networks and earth observation techniques to monitor climate change.

This project brings a team of leading UK universities with many decades expertise in atomic physics together with industry leaders specialising in optical systems engineering to deliver a world leading miniature optical system for atom cooling, trapping and probing. This innovative approach will generate a source of optically trapped strontium atoms suitable to deliver highly accurate time referenced to atomic standards. Ultimately, this technology could be employed in a fully isolated clock that is capable of providing a GNSS-surpassing timing standard at the heart of future autonomous vehicles and critical infrastructure networks.