At The University of Alabama’s QuanTime lab, students are not only building atomic clocks, they are researching the next breakthroughs in precision timing.
Communications networks, financial trading, GPS navigation and a vast array of scientific instruments all depend on precision timekeeping, which keeps time at the scale on billionths of a second. Atomic clocks, which enable precise positioning, navigation and timing — or precision timekeeping — use the natural frequency of an atom’s vibrations to keep time.
Under the supervision of Dr. Thejesh Bandi, associate professor and technical director of the ACCEPT program in the department of physics and astronomy, students in the QuanTime Lab are being trained to build atomic clocks, timescales and safe GNSS/GPS methods.
“We have built our own clock ensemble, which means multiple kinds of atomic clocks combined to give the best performance output,” Bandi said. An ensemble output harnesses the timekeeping of several atomic clocks and then validates the time against the Coordinated Universal Time, the global timekeeping standard.
“It is unique to have a timescale for research and training in an academic setting,” said Bandi.
Chiming on Timing
The team didn’t stop at assembling and testing their atomic clock ensemble. They wanted others in the University community to have access to the official UA precision timescale. Top on Bandi’s wish list was to synchronize Denny Chimes with the lab’s timekeeping signal.
“One challenge was to get the timing distributed from this lab. And that’s when I thought, instead of distributing it directly from our lab only to Denny Chimes, let us distribute it throughout the UA network and even beyond UA,” Bandi said. Once they achieved that, they were able to integrate that signal with the instruments and software used to manage the chimes — achieving a precise campanile, or bell, tower.
Now, anyone around the world can synchronize their computer’s time to the atomic clocks that keep time for Denny Chimes. Using their computer’s time settings, users on campus would sync to the time server at 10.10.65.10, and anyone off campus can sync their time settings to Rolltime.ua.edu or 130.160.143.225.
“Our timing systems are stable down to the nanoseconds,” Bandi said. On campus, an individual device may have discrepancies of up to few microseconds, due to the protocols used for sending the signals through the ethernet where the number of users and switches between the signal origin and each user determines its accuracy.
Student effort and campus partners
The QuanTime lab includes students involved in research from across several disciplines with a dual focus on research and workforce development under the ACCEPT program for the various industries that rely on precision timing.
The Denny Chimes project included Jahnvi Verma, a graduate student in the physics department, and undergrad students August Connors and Prajwal Halalae from the mathematics and computer science departments, respectively.
The researchers worked closely with the Office of Information Technology to manage the operational challenges of distributing the QuanTime signal. “OIT has been exceptional in helping us to get rolltime.ua.edu established with a dedicated IP address,” Bandi said.
Bandi also thanked Dr. Patrick LeClair, chair of the department of physics and astronomy, and Charles “Skip” Snead, chair of the department of music, who facilitated access to Denny Chimes.