Optical Atomic Clock Outperforms Cesium Clock

Our expertise in Metrology seems to be improving quite dramatically nowadays. This is one such example.

Now, in Physical Review Letters, Alan Madej and colleagues at the National Research Council in Canada report they have greatly increased the accuracy with which another atomic frequency standard, the optical transition in an isolated strontium ion, can be measured. Furthermore, the precision of their frequency measurement now supersedes that of the existing cesium standard, which could lead to the adoption of a new frequency standard for defining the second as the basic unit of time.

You can get a free copy of this paper at the link provided above.

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