The NIST ytterbium clock is based on about 30,000 heavy metal atoms that are cooled to 15 microkelvins (close to absolute zero) and trapped in a column of several hundred pancake-shaped wells - an ...

“The output of our laser system can be scaled to higher average and peak power, due to the power scalability of ytterbium thin-disk lasers. Employing the system for the accurate detection of ...

A second laser pulses a beam 518 trillion times/sec into the lattice, causing a transition between two energy levels within the atoms, thus creating the clock ticks.

High-power femtosecond pulses Central to this innovation is the ytterbium thin-disk laser, which produces high-power, femtosecond pulses at megahertz repetition rates. This allows the system to pump ...