Nuclear clock

Common card · No. 314056

A nuclear clock or nuclear optical clock is an atomic clock which uses photons from a nuclear isomeric transition as its reference frequency, instead of the atomic electron transition energy used by conventional atomic clocks. Such a clock is expected to be more precise than the best current atomic clocks by a factor of about 10, with an achievable precision approaching the 10−19 level. The only nuclear state suitable for the development of a nuclear clock using existing technology is thorium-229m, an isomer of thorium-229 and the lowest-energy nuclear isomer known. With an energy of 8.355733554021(8) eV, this corresponds to a frequency of 2020407384335±2 kHz, or wavelength of 148.382182883 nm, in the vacuum ultraviolet region, making it accessible to laser excitation.

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