Ytterbium atomic clock could open a new window on fundamental physics

For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully harnessed a rare orbital transition in atoms of ...
Interesting Engineering on MSN

Japanese scientists make ytterbium atomic clock that could detect dark matter

Physicists have developed a highly precise and ultra-sensitive atomic clock based on ytterbium, which ...
AOL

A Chip that Keeps Time (Almost) Like an Atomic Clock

For decades, atomic clocks have provided the most stable means of timekeeping. They measure time by oscillating in step with the resonant frequency of atoms, a method so accurate that it serves as the ...
Edhat

Researchers Demonstrate Integrated Stabilized Laser Chips Performing Clock And Quantum Operations On A Room Temperature Trapped Ion Qubit

Researchers from UC Santa Barbara and the University of Massachusetts Amherst have, for the first time, demonstrated a chip-scale, stabilized, visible light laser that drives a trapped ion atomic ...
unr.edu

The most precise clock ever built ticks closer to reality

Nuclear clocks are the next big thing in ultra-precise timekeeping. Recent publications in the journal Nature propose a new method and new technology to build the clocks. Timekeeping has become more ...
EurekAlert!

New type of optical atomic clock in sight

Unlike other atoms (left), ytterbium-173 (right) has a large nuclear spin and a strongly deformed nucleus whose strong fields interact with the electron shell. This turns forbidden quantum jumps into ...
Hackaday

2025 One Hertz Challenge: Atomic Decay Clock Is Accurate But Not Precise

At this point, atomic clocks are old news. They’ve been quietly keeping our world on schedule for decades now, and have been through several iterations with each generation gaining more accuracy. They ...
Nature

A quantum boost for ultra-precise clocks

Nobel laureate Arthur Schawlow’s advice to “never measure anything but frequency” is a central principle of modern precision metrology and timekeeping. Today’s spectroscopy is advanced enough to teach ...
Optics

Optical atomic clock combines single-ion accuracy and multi-ion stability

For many years, cesium atomic clocks have been reliably keeping time around the world. But the future belongs to even more accurate clocks: optical atomic clocks. In a few years’ time, they could ...
Physics World

Ion-clock transition could benefit quantum computing and nuclear physics

Nuclear effect The deformed shape of the ytterbium-173 nucleus (right) makes it possible to excite the clock transition with a relatively low-power laser. The same transition is forbidden (left) if ...