{"688907":{"#nid":"688907","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Optical Clock Networks Beyond the Metrology Laboratory","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDr. Laura Sinclair is the Optical Time Transfer Project Lead in the Fiber Sources and Applications Group \u2013 part of the Communications Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado.\u0026nbsp; She received a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2004, a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2011 and was a post-doc at NIST Boulder, including as a National Research Council (NRC) post-doctoral fellow, before joining the staff.\u0026nbsp; She has been awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2019), a Department of Commerce Gold Medal for Scientific\/Engineering Achievement as part of the Boulder Atomic Clock Optical Network Collaboration (2019), a NIST Excellence in Technology Transfer Award (2024), the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Basic Science (2024), and an Optica Fellow Award (2026).\u0026nbsp; Her research focuses on the development of optical frequency combs and their wide-ranging applications particularly to optical time transfer and ranging.\u0026nbsp; With the Optical Time Transfer Project Team, she has recently demonstrated optical time transfer at the quantum limit achieving sub-femtosecond time synchronization over 300 kilometers of air.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ESuch optical clock networks would enable redefinition of the second, a tremendous range of fundamental physics tests and chronometric geodesy.\u0026nbsp; In locations with sufficient infrastructure, these networks can be established using CW-laser-based frequency transfer across fiber links.\u0026nbsp; However, in the absence of this infrastructure, free-space approaches are required which can operate with intermittency, high link losses and residual timing uncertainties below that of the state-of-the-art optical clocks themselves.\u0026nbsp; Furthermore, as transportable optical clocks capable of operating outside a metrology laboratory become available, these time transfer solutions need to be operable in the same challenging environments.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHere, I will present our development of a quantum-limited approach to optical time transfer that relies upon an optical tracking oscillator approach using a time programmable frequency comb. Using frequency combs as optical tracking oscillators to reach the quantum limit for optical time transfer, we have been able to demonstrate sub-femtosecond time transfer across a 300-km terrestrial free-space link with greater than 100 dB of loss, a factor of 10,000 times lower received power threshold than previous frequency-comb-based approaches.\u0026nbsp; I will show results from this 300-km demonstration as well as more recent work connecting optical atomic clocks across open air paths.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The application space for state-of-the-art optical clocks expands dramatically when they can be connected and compared between distant laboratories."}],"uid":"36562","created_gmt":"2026-03-13 12:45:33","changed_gmt":"2026-03-13 12:48:07","author":"tnevels9","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2026-04-01T14:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2026-04-01T15:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2026-04-01T15:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2026-04-01 18:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2026-04-01 19:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2026-04-01 19:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"location":"Howey Physics Building, Room N201\/N202","extras":[],"hg_media":{"679611":{"id":"679611","type":"image","title":"Sinclair2025_headshot_3--1-.JPG","body":null,"created":"1773406022","gmt_created":"2026-03-13 12:47:02","changed":"1773406022","gmt_changed":"2026-03-13 12:47:02","alt":"Laura Sinclair","file":{"fid":"263793","name":"Sinclair2025_headshot_3--1-.JPG","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/03\/13\/Sinclair2025_headshot_3--1-.JPG","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/03\/13\/Sinclair2025_headshot_3--1-.JPG","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":7271144,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/03\/13\/Sinclair2025_headshot_3--1-.JPG?itok=wW9DjWn8"}}},"media_ids":["679611"],"groups":[{"id":"126011","name":"School of Physics"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"177814","name":"Postdoc"},{"id":"174045","name":"Graduate students"},{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}