Synchronization of Clocks Through 12 km of Strongly Turbulent Air Over a City.

ABSTRACT: We demonstrate real-time, femtosecond-level clock synchronization across a low-lying, strongly turbulent, 12-km horizontal air path by optical two-way time transfer. For this long horizontal free-space path, the integrated turbulence extends well into the strong turbulence regime corresponding to multiple scattering with a Rytov variance up to 7 and with the number of signal interruptions exceeding 100 per second. Nevertheless, optical two-way time transfer is used to synchronize a remote clock to a master clock with femtosecond-level agreement and with a relative time deviation dropping as low as a few hundred attoseconds. Synchronization is shown for a remote clock based on either an optical or microwave oscillator and using either tip-tilt or adaptive-optics free-space optical terminals

SUBMITTER: Sinclair LC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5769483 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature