Synchronizing Optical Clocks to One Quadrillionth of a Second
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - 11:01
in Physics & Chemistry
An international team of researchers, led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has advanced their work with synchronizing a remote optical clock with a master clock by exploring what happens to time signals that need to travel through 12 kilometers (km) of turbulent air. As the team reports this week in Applied Physics Letters, they were able to demonstrate real-time, femtosecond-level clock synchronization across a low-lying, strongly turbulent, 12-km horizontal air path by optical two-way time transfer.