Higher accuracy atomic clocks, such as the “tweezer clock” depicted here, could result from linking or “entangling” atoms in a new way through a method known as “spin squeezing,” in which one property of an atom is measured more precisely than is usually allowed in quantum mechanics by decreasing the precision in which a complementary property is measured.
Credit: S. Burrows/JILA
Opening new possibilities for quantum sensors, atomic clocks and tests of fundamental physics, JILA researchers have developed new ways of “entangling” or interlinking the properties of large numbers of particles. In the process they have devised ways to measure large groups of atoms more accurately even in disruptive, noisy environments.
The new techniques are described in a pair of papers published in Nature. JILA is a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder.
“Entanglement is the holy grail of measurement science,” said Ana Maria Rey, a theoretical physicist and a JILA and NIST Fellow. “Atoms are the best sensors ever. They’re universal. The problem is that they’re quantum objects, so they’re intrinsically noisy. When you measure them, sometimes they’re in one energy state, sometimes they’re in another state. When you entangle them, you can manage to cancel the noise.”
When atoms are entangled, what happens to one atom affects all the atoms entangled to it. Having dozens — better yet, hundreds — of entangled atoms working together reduces the noise, and the signal from the measurement becomes clearer, more certain. Entangled atoms also reduce the number of times scientists need to run their measurements, getting results in less time.
One means of entanglement is with a process called spin squeezing. Like all objects that obey the rules of quantum p ..
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