Research Stay of Phillip Durdaut

For my research stay abroad I visited the Institute FEMTO-ST in Besançon, France, which is a joint CNRS-University Bourgogne Franche-Comté research institute that carries out both fundamental and applied research in many fields of physics including optics, acoustics, robotics, automatics, time-frequency metrology, mechanics, and energy storage. For 6 weeks I have been working with the Time and Frequency Department under the supervision of Enrico Rubiola and Jean-Michel Friedt. They are outstanding experts in the fields of phase noise, surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors, oscillators, and low noise instrumentation. Together with them I was able to further improve the noise floor of the readout electronics for our SAW magnetic field sensors as well as to develop an analytical noise model for the various types of readout systems. More particularly, a theory has been developed and verified by various measurements which allows to derive the ultimate limit of detection in both open-loop and closed-loop SAW sensor systems. So far, two journal papers have been written based on the work during the research stay. Because several further ideas emerged, this fruitful collaboration is still ongoing. I would like to take this opportunity to gratefully thank my hosts once again for their excellent support both during my stay and also afterwards. In addition, I also want to thank the German Research Foundation (DFG) for funding this research stay as part of the CRC 1261.

Phillip Durdaut