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Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article directly stated more precise atomic clocks.
Not a physicist, so I am asking out of curiosity and to learn: have the limitations to the precision of current atomic clocks posed any problems?
I was reading up on this (now outdated) wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium#Thorium-22...
And it mentions the application as qubit for quantum computers. If the state change is relatively simple, cheap and stable, what could this do for quantum computing? I picture a crystalline processor holding Thorium nuclei as the brains of a new supercomputer? Would that be viable?
Resources companies are salivating
What does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
Thorium-229 has two energy states. A ground state, and an excited isometric state. The laser is used to transition the nucleus from the ground state to the excited isometric state.
So they hit their thorium with a laser, and then instead of the laser passing through, it gets absorbed, and then they get a flash of radiation back, letting them know the thorium was excited. The delay between the laser pulse and the flash of radiation is a property of the particular thorium nucleus, and is not affected by environmental circumstances like temperature or electric/magnetic fields, so can be relied on as a very precise measurement of time.
Did anyone understand how they hold a nucleus (not an atom) in a crystal? Nucleus is charged and seeks electrons, I thought you need an electromagnetic trap for that (which the article says they don't use).
Is there some direct application? Like using the excitation states of different atoms for storing information?
The article directly stated more precise atomic clocks.
The cool applications usually come later (or they're more esoteric). The researchers were more excited to determine the actual frequency than think about clocks
This has military applications as well, right?
Replacing GPS for nuclear submarines.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And then the nuclei return to the ground state. That process is probabilistic and measured in half-lives. The key point is that the decay back to ground state happens at a very precise rate that is not influenced by effectively anything, and can be measured accurately. Thus, a clock.
> That process is probabilistic and measured in half-lives > The decay back to ground state happens at a very precise rate that is not influenced by effectively anything That sounds contradictory to me.
Now how the heck do you generate ~148.38nm light with a narrow linewidth? Their approach using four-wave mixing inherently results in short pulses. .. and given that it decays through gamma emission, does this mean we could now build an optically pumped gamma ray laser?
The development of dedicated VUV lasers with narrow linewidth will make it possible to access a new regime of resolution and accuracy in laser M¨ossbauer spectroscopy and to perform coherent control of a nuclear excitation"
Previously, if you wanted to manipulate nuclear states, you needed a synchrotron. Now, you need an infinitely less expensive instrument. I suppose the idea is that that will generate a lot of interest in improving the less-expensive instrument.