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American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 23(100)

DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.100.233901

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Measurement of the Fundamental Thermal Noise Limit in a Cryogenic Sapphire Frequency Standard Using Bimodal Maser Oscillations

Journal article published in 2008 by Karim Benmessaï, Daniel Lloyd Creedon ORCID, Michael Edmund Tobar, Pierre-Yves Bourgeois, Yann Kersalé, Vincent Giordano
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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

We report observations of the Schawlow-Townes noise limit in a cryogenic sapphire secondary frequency standard. The effect causes a fundamental limit to the frequency stability, and was measured through the novel excitation of a bimodal maser oscillation of a Whispering Gallery doublet at 12.04 GHz. The beat frequency of 10 kHz between the oscillations enabled a sensitive probe for this measurement of fractional frequency instability of ${10}^{$-${}14}{$τ${}}^{$-${}1/2}$ with only 0.5 pW of output power.