Frequency standards: current status, perspectives using nuclear transitions

by Dr Filippo Levi (INRIM Torino)

Wednesday 16 Jul 2014, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Rostagni meeting room (INFN-LNL)

Accurate clocks have a very important role both in science and technology since they are the most stable and accurate reference ever realized by mankind. Thus anything that can be measured with atomic clocks can be measured at the most precise level.
Since the first atomic clock realized in the ‘50s stability and accuracy of Cs atomic frequency standards have progressively improved reaching the outstanding relative frequency accuracy  of ≈1E-16 in the realization of the SI definition of the second. For various reasons it will be hard to further improve Cs based atomic frequency standards. However new optical frequency standards have already demonstrated to be able to surpass the Cs performances, achieving results in E-18 range. Even more precise clocks can in principle be realized using nuclear transitions in Th 229.
During the seminar an overview of the more accurate clock will be given and perspective of this field will be discussed.