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Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Construction and Characterization of External Cavity Diode Lasers for Atomic Physics
Published on: April 24, 2014
A derivation of the long-term degradation of a pulsed atomic frequency standard from a control-loop model
1Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA.
Abstract:
The phase of a frequency standard that uses periodic interrogation and control of a local oscillator (LO) is degraded by a long-term random-walk component induced by downconversion of LO noise into the loop passband. The Dick formula for the noise level of this degradation is derived from an explicit solution of an LO control-loop model.
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