Progress towards primary frequency standard

The cesium fountain clock as primary frequency standard is widely used in the areas, such as time-keeping system, satellite navigation, fundamental physics research, etc. The principle of operation of cesium fountain clock is introduced. The noise source and frequency shift term are ananlyzed. The major noise source influencing frequency stability are cold atom loading time, microwave phase noise related to Dick effect, and detection laser frequency noise. The major frequency bias influencing frequency uncertainty is blackbody radiation frequency shift,cold atom collision frequency shift,distributed cavity phase frequency shift and microwave leakage frequency shift.The key technique to achieve highperformance cesium fountain clock is sumerized. The application of cesium fountain clock is presented. The status of space cesium clock and future primary frequency standard of optical clock are shown.