Patent 7221231 was granted and assigned to The Aerospace Corporation on May, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An RF-discharge lamp stabilization system for preferred use in a Rubidium atomic clock, senses acoustic oscillations of plasma ions in the 20.0 kHz range to assess the performance of the lamp for determining radio frequency parameters of the lamp while the lamp is in operation and while the performance of an atomic clock is influenced by the plasma character, with lamp spectral outputs being actively stabilized for improved vapor-cell clock performance.