Theory behind Ytterbium-based optical lattice clocks have been mentioned on this list before[1] but these results were new so I thought I'd share them.
NIST released a paper[2] (link to PDF[3] on the right side on arxiv) a week ago on results from two optical lattice clocks[4] with impressive results. Even by time-nuts standards.;) "A measurement comparing these systems demonstrates an unprecedented atomic clock instability of 1.6 × 10−18 after only 7 hours of averaging." The ADEV plot of one of these can be found on p. 14. Instead of posting more spoilers I'll let you all read the paper in all its glory amongst yourselves. No mentions of when standards like these could start reporting to BIPM and contribute to TAI but I guess that's some way off. As someone mentioned to me regarding new atomic standards (at that time atomic fountains) and mean time between failure: "Comes with physisist attached." Now that I think of it that might've been from slides presented by Ludlow himself.:) // jwalck [1] "[time-nuts] OT: The tick-tock of the optical clock ...." http://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2012-April/066582.html [1] " An atomic clock with $10^{-18}$ instability" http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.5869 [2] http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.5869v1 [3] "Physicists Unveil World’s Most Precise Clock (And a Twin to Compare It Against)" http://www.technologyreview.com/view/515456/physicists-unveil-worlds-most-precise-clock-and-a-twin-to-compare-it-against/ _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
