A special kind of clock. Cesium fountain clocks such as NIST-F4 are a type of atomic clock—a complex, high-precision device that extracts timing pulses from atoms.

In cesium fountain clocks, a cloud of around 100,000 cesium atoms is first gradually cooled with lasers. After this, the atoms are lobbed upwards and exposed to microwave radiation.

Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) physicists are on track to bring the institution’s new atomic fountain online in 2025, enabling advanced quantum sensing experimentation in support of precision ...

An atomic fountain is essentially an interferometer – a device that extracts information from determining interference – that tosses atoms up and down, not unlike a water fountain.

According to scientists at NIST in Boulder, their newest atomic clock, the NIST-F4, will help track time more precisely and help put global time on a more accurate frequency.

A new atomic clock is one of the world’s best timekeepers, researchers say — and after years of development, the “fountain”-style clock is now in use helping keep official U.S. time. Known ...

Computers measure vibrations in Cesium atoms from one of the Cesium fountains, a part of what is commonly referred to as “the atomic clock”, as it measures time to incredible accuracy at the ...

NIST-F4 is a cesium fountain clock, which is considered the cream of the crop — there are fewer than 20 of its kind operating in the entire world. Fountain clocks are not constantly running like ...