Evergreen-30 (EG-30) optical clock
A rack-mounted optical atomic clock designed to keep picosecond-level time outside the lab, including at sea, as a building block for timing and navigation networks more precise than GPS.
Why it matters
GPS works by broadcasting precisely timed pulses from atomic clocks on satellites, and 3-meter positioning needs timing to about 10 nanoseconds. Centimeter navigation and faster data networks need roughly 1,000 times better timing, and lab clocks that good are too big and fragile to deploy. A rugged optical clock makes that timing usable in the field and, later, in orbit.
How the technology works
Optical clocks count the very fast oscillations of light locked to an atomic transition, which is far steadier than the microwave transitions used in GPS clocks. Vector Atomic packs the atom cell, lasers and control electronics into a rackmount unit.
It reports an at-sea test of three optical clocks in August 2022 and 10 femtosecond synchronization over a 30 km free-space link with NIST in April 2022.
Sources
Updated Oct 22, 2026 · How we source facts · Suggest a correction