Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China have achieved a major breakthrough in optical clock technology, developing a strontium optical lattice clock with stability and ...

Optical lattice clocks are emerging timekeeping devices based on tens of thousands of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice (i.e., a grid of laser light). By oscillating between two distinct ...

Atomic clocks have long been the gold standard for measuring time and frequency. Among them, optical clocks—using atoms like strontium or aluminum—have reached staggering levels of accuracy, with ...

For the first lecture in the Fall Physics Colloquium Series, Chuankun Zhang, a graduate student from the University of Colorado Boulder's physics department and a researcher at JILA, delivered an ...

To measure the passing of time, every clock works by counting oscillations of some reference frequency—whether it's the swinging pendulum of a clocktower, or the vibrations of an electrified quartz ...

The way time is measured is on the edge of a historic upgrade. At the heart of this change is a new kind of atomic clock that uses light instead of microwaves. This shift means timekeeping could ...

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 ...

Researchers are looking for new ways to improve timekeeping because even small gains in stability can help physicists discover subtle physical effects. The thorium-229 nuclear clock is a newer venture ...

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China developed a strontium optical lattice clock with stability and uncertainty below 10⁻¹⁹, losing or gaining less than 1 second in 30 ...