The scientists of the QUEST Institute at PTB have developed and tested a new type of optical atomic clock. Highly charged ions are a form of matter that is commonly found in the cosmos, such as in the sun or other stars. They are called 'highly charged' because they have lost many electrons and the
Illustration of the laser interrogation of a highly charged ion clock . Credit: PTB
As a result, the outermost electrons in highly charged ions are more strongly bound to the atomic nucleus than in neutral or weakly charged atoms. This makes highly charged ions less affected by external electromagnetic fields, but more sensitive to the fundamental effects of special relativity, quantum electrodynamics, and the atomic nucleus.
Beforehand, the team had to solve some fundamental problems, such as detection and cooling, in years of work: For atomic clocks, one has to cool the particles down extremely in order to stop them as much as possible and thus read out their frequency at rest. Highly charged ions, however, are produced by creating an extremely hot. Because of their extreme atomic structure, highly charged ions can’t be cooled directly with laser light, and standard detection methods can’t be used either.
They achieved a measurement uncertainty of 2 parts in 1017 − comparable to many currently operated optical atomic clocks. “We expect a further reduction of the uncertainty through technical improvements, which should bring us into the range of the best atomic clocks,” says research group leader Piet Schmidt.
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