Test of determining geopotential difference between two sites at Wuhan based on optical clocks’ frequency comparisons
Authors: Anh The Hoang, Ziyu Shen, Kuangchao Wu, An Ning, Wenbin Shen
Remote Sensing
: 14/4850 :
Publishing year: 9/2022
Applications of optical clocks in physical geodesy for determining geopotential are of
increasing interest to scientists as the accuracy of optical clocks improves and the clock size becomes
more and more compact. In this study, we propose a data processing method using the ensemble
empirical mode decomposition technique to determine the geopotential difference between two sites
in Wuhan based on the frequency comparison of two optical clocks. We use the frequency comparison
record data of two Ca+ optical clocks based on the optical fiber frequency transfer method, provided
by the Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Chinese Academy
of Sciences (Wuhan, China). By optical clock comparisons we obtained a geopotential difference of
42.50 ± 1.03 m2·s−2 (equivalent to height difference of 4.33 ± 0.11 m) between the two sites, which
is excellent compared to the geopotential difference of 42.56 ± 0.29 m2·s−2 (equivalent to height
difference of 4.34 ± 0.03 m) measured by a spirit leveling. The results show that the optical fiber
frequency transfer method is promising in determining the geopotential and potential for unifying
the world height system.
OFFT; optical fiber; frequency transfer; geopotential; orthometric height