ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,578,686, issued on March 17, was assigned to NEC Corp. (Tokyo).
"Atomic oscillator" was invented by Kenta Matsumoto (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An atomic oscillator of the present disclosure includes: a gas cell in which alkali metal atoms are encapsulated; a light generator that irradiates the gas cell with irradiation light having at least two different frequency components; a light detector that detects transmission light transmitted by the gas cell; and a controller that determines the resonance frequency of the irradiation light based on the light amount of the detected transmission light, and controls an oscillation freq...