Their results meant they could run meaningful experiments for much longer than their laser would allow in a normal optical clock. However, when they shined the laser on two clocks in the chamber at the same time and compared them, the number of atoms with excited electrons stayed the same between the two clocks for up to 26 seconds.

Using just one atomic clock, the team found that their laser was only reliably able to excite electrons in the same number of atoms for one-tenth of a second. In their new study, they created a multiplexed clock, where strontium atoms can be separated into multiple clocks arranged in a line in the same vacuum chamber. Designing a clock that could use average lasers would be a boon.

But they also knew that many downstream applications of optical clocks will require portable, commercially available lasers like theirs. Optical atomic clocks keep time by using a laser that is tuned to precisely match this frequency, and they require some of the world's most sophisticated lasers to keep accurate time.īy comparison, Kolkowitz's group has 'a relatively lousy laser,' he says, so they knew that any clock they built would not be the most accurate or precise on its own. 'We're working to both improve their performance and to develop emerging applications that are enabled by this improved performance.'Ītomic clocks are so precise because they take advantage of a fundamental property of atoms: when an electron changes energy levels, it absorbs or emits light with a frequency that is identical for all atoms of a particular element. 'Optical lattice clocks are already the best clocks in the world, and here we get this level of performance that no one has seen before,' says Shimon Kolkowitz, a UW-Madison physics professor and senior author of the study. Its design allows the team to test ways to search for gravitational waves, attempt to detect dark matter, and discover new physics with clocks. Send us feedback.Their instrument, known as an optical lattice atomic clock, can measure differences in time to a precision equivalent to losing just one second every 300 billion years and is the first example of a 'multiplexed' optical clock, where six separate clocks can exist in the same environment. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'atomic clock.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. 2021 In a media statement, the company stated that their rubidium atomic clock would deliver a frequency stability of about 2x10-14 over averaging intervals of 10,000 seconds. 2022 White’s comedic timing was as precise as an atomic clock.

2022 And this is where the optical atomic clock’s secret weapon kicks in. Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 18 July 2022 Upgrades to atomic clock lasers may give us a more precise measurement of the second. 2022 After all, how much does an atomic clock really affect an everyday person? 2022 While the Earth on June 29 did indeed record its shortest day since the adoption of the atomic clock standard in 1970 - at 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours - scientists say this is a normal fluctuation.ĬBS News, 13 Aug. 2022 Researchers have recorded the shortest day on Earth since the invention of the atomic clock.Īshley Strickland, CNN, 13 Aug. Recent Examples on the Web More accurate systems can be deployed locally but, speaking generally, GNSS is able to deliver atomic clock accuracy on a global scale without the need for actual local atomic clocks.

Atomic clock