Dear fellow time-nuts,
Last week as the International Frequency Control Seminar (IFCS) 2016 in
New Orleans. I thought it may be of some interest to list-members to
read some recollection of the events, from the top of my head.
This was my first time to the IFCS as well as New Orleans, so there
where plenty new, but considering that I was at the EFTF for my second
time just a month ago it was somewhat similar.
Sunday I met up with Francis Grosz, who lives close enough to drive in
for the event, and after a couple of (stiff) drinks we went for dinner
with John Vig.
Monday was tutorials, and it was interesting to see Judah Levine's
approach to the characterization of oscillators. Judah had a discussion
with one of the guys about something, at which time I presented my
approach. I re-iterated that over lunch and Judah then concluded that I
needed to publish that. OK, if Judah says it needs to be published, I'm
not completely off the mark there.
Tuesday was first real session day, which included the honor of Dr.
David W. Allan on the 50 year anniversary of the Allan Variance. It was
delightful to meet him again, and now with his wife Edna. Also given
price was as reported separately Bernd Neubig, which was nice to meet
again and have a chat with.
I also got the chance for a first real sit-down with Dr. Ulrich Rohde,
with whom I had interesting exchange throughout the event.
In the Cross-correlation session, Archita Hati from NIST presented a
nice overview of the cross-correlation problem and its many issues, and
also hinted about a possible solution for this. This was the first joint
presentation/paper with the NIST phase-noise folks (Archita Hati, Craig
Nelson and David Howe) and me, and Archita was very courteous in the way
she referred to me and my input. Francois Vernotte and Enrico Rubiola
seemed impressed with the approach. More to be presented in a proper paper.
Wednesday included the Allan Variance session chaired by Dr. David W.
Allan, in which Judah Levine presented a paper on 50 year with Allan
variance, co-written with David Allan. After that it was my turn, and I
then presented my High-speed Memory-efficient algorithm for multi-tau
PDEV analysis. Nice to present recent developments right after 50 years
of development-history, and with David as chair. I think that I
survived, as Demetrios Matsakis, USNO, was more eager to present me to
Joe Taylor afterwards than correct me on the science, which is a good
sign. They wrote an article way back on the use of cubic variance in
astronomical context, which is naturally interesting to follow up.
Thursday was for me a little more discussions with others, which was
kind of nice. More talk with Ulrich for instance.
Friday was spectacular, as we where a few lucky to be bussed out the
LIGO detector, Livingston. Extremely fascinating hardware. It's
essentially a Michelson interferometer with 4 km arms. When you are
there you only see half of it, as the building half-way down blocks the
next half. It's the second larges volume of high vacuum, second only to
the CERN LHC. The arms have never been back to normal pressure since the
original pump-down and baking. The end-equipment have however been
replaced and upgraded. The people working on it was very friendly and
answered our many questions. The out-door lunch was also nice. That day
I also got a very distinct feeling for how flat Louisiana really is.
As we got back from the LIGO trip, I got my bags, wished Enrico and
Francois goodbye and flew up to Washington DC, just to drive up to Bob
Camp for the weekend. Let's just say that we had fun together. :)
Very friendly, good food, something to go along with it, tour of the
toys and sheds. Ends up with extra luggage at home. :)
The drive back to Washington was quite a different tour, driving the
smaller roads was very nice but took more time than I thought.
Pennsylvania 94 from Carlisle down through Hanover, then cutting over to
496 to end up driving Maryland 97/Georgia Avenue/7th Street NW which
continues straight through the heart of Washington DC, past the National
Gallery of Art, classic front-view of the Capitolium, past the National
Air and Space Museum and then further to National Harbor where I have
home base for the rest of the week.
BTW, this brings me to DC:
http://www.gps.gov/governance/advisory/meetings/2016-05/
Cheers,
Magnus
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