NIST Upgrades Quantum Logic Clock for Top Performance
By IQT News posted 31 Jul 2019
(EurekaAlert) Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have been quietly upgrading their quantum logic clock design for the past eight years, mainly to reduce errors from unwanted motion of the single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom) that provides the clock “ticks.”
The quantum logic clock’s systematic uncertainty (how closely the clock represents the ion’s natural vibrations, or frequency) is 9.4×10-19, the best of any clock worldwide. This means the logic clock would now neither gain nor lose one second in 33 billion years, which is about two-and-a-half times the estimated age of the universe.
