Thorium clock

JILA’s groundbreaking work on nuclear clocks has been highlighted in Interesting Engineering, showcasing the team’s latest advancements in ultra-precise timekeeping. Their recent study, published as an Editor's Choice paper in Physical Review Letters, explores how temperature variations affect the thorium-229 nuclear transition—an essential step toward developing a next-generation nuclear clock that could surpass the accuracy of current atomic clocks.

JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye and his team's revolutionary work on nuclear clock technology was recently highlighted in a feature by Scientific American. The article delves into the creation of the world’s first nuclear clock, developed in Boulder, Colorado, which builds upon decades of research into precision timekeeping. Nuclear clocks, which rely on the ticking of atomic nuclei rather than atomic electrons, promise to surpass the precision and accuracy of current atomic clocks, which have set the standard for international timekeeping for decades.

In a recent CNN article, groundbreaking research led by JILA and NIST Fellow Jun Ye and his team was highlighted for its remarkable advancements in nuclear clock technology. The article emphasized how their work builds upon the pioneering efforts of scientists who embedded thorium-229 into crystals in 2023, allowing for enhanced signal tracking by suppressing noise from nuclear decay.