{"id":231696,"date":"2026-02-20T05:25:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/quantum-entanglement-pushes-optical-clocks-to-new-precision"},"modified":"2026-02-20T05:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:25:22","slug":"quantum-entanglement-pushes-optical-clocks-to-new-precision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/quantum-entanglement-pushes-optical-clocks-to-new-precision","title":{"rendered":"Quantum entanglement pushes optical clocks to new precision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/quantum-entanglement-pushes-optical-clocks-to-new-precision2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By replacing single atoms with an entangled pair of ions, physicists in Germany have demonstrated unprecedented stability in an optical clock. Publishing their results in <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prl\/abstract\/10.1103\/dyqm-k8p6\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/a>, a team led by Kai Dietze at the German National Metrology Institute, hope their approach could help usher in a new generation of optical clocks\u2014opening up new possibilities in precision experiments and metrology.<\/p>\n<p>To measure the passing of time, every clock works by counting oscillations of some reference frequency\u2014whether it\u2019s the swinging pendulum of a clocktower, or the vibrations of an electrified quartz crystal in a modern digital clock. Timekeeping accuracy is directly tied to how reliable these oscillations are: while a pendulum can accrue noticeable variations in its swing, vibrating quartz is far more reliable, making quartz clocks far more accurate.<\/p>\n<p>Today, optical clocks are the most precise timekeepers ever achieved. In these devices, atoms are first \u201cprobed\u201d by an ultra-stable laser tuned close to a specific optical transition. When the laser frequency matches the energy difference between two electronic states, an electron is excited to a higher energy level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By replacing single atoms with an entangled pair of ions, physicists in Germany have demonstrated unprecedented stability in an optical clock. Publishing their results in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Kai Dietze at the German National Metrology Institute, hope their approach could help usher in a new generation of optical clocks\u2014opening up new [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231696\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}