Published: February 03, 2011
In 2008-2009, much to their amazement,researchers working on the Jun Ye group’s neutral Sr optical atomic clock discovered tiny frequency shifts caused by colliding fermions! They figured out that the clock laser was interacting slightly differently with the Sr atoms inside a one-dimensional (pancake-shaped) trap. The light-atom interactions resulted in the atoms no longer being identical. And, once they were distinguishable, formerly unneighborly atoms were able to run into each other, compromising clock performance.
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