July 24, 2024 feature This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked peer-reviewed publication trusted source proofread by Ingrid Fadelli , Phys.org Researchers at the Ye Lab at JILA (the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder) and University of Delaware recently created a highly precise optical lattice clock based on trapped strontium atoms.
Their clock, presented in a Physical Review Letters paper, exhibits a total systematic uncertainty of 8.1 x 10 -19 , which is the lowest uncertainty reported to date. "This paper came out of a decades-long pursuit in the Ye lab towards building the best clocks," Alexander Aeppli, co-author of the paper, told Phys.
org. "Measuring time is a fundamental task in physics, and each advancement in measurement precision and accuracy opens the door to studying new phenomena and creating new technologies." Most existing time-keeping technologies specifically measure the period during which an electron oscillates in a cesium atom.
These instruments are known as "microwave atomic clocks ," as the frequencies of the oscillations they measure are in the microwave band, resembling the frequencies of electromagnetic oscillations inside a microwave oven. "Many recent atomic clocks, ours included, use an 'optical' transition, where the frequency of the oscillation i.