“Cool” Front Cover Feature for the Sapphire Clock

The Sapphire Clock is featured on the front cover of “Cold Facts”, the official publication of the Cryogenic Society of America

The Sapphire Clock is a cryogenic sapphire oscillator that allows time to be measured to the femtosecond scale (one quadrillionth of a second), the kind of accuracy required for ultra high precision measurements; such as radar technology, long baseline astronomy and quantum computing.

Building off technology developed by Prof Andre Luiten in 1996 and Prof John Hartnett in 2004-2012, the most recent version of the Sapphire Clock is capable of 100 time better spectral purity than other commercially available technologies.

The Sapphire Clock team is led by A/Prof Martin O’Connor and a commercial version will be available in late 2017.

Ref: O’Connor et al (2017) Cold Facts, Vol 33 (1): 16-17.