Millihertz-linewidth laser could make the best clocks more precise

A theoretical proposal by scientists at JILA (which is jointly operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, both in Boulder, CO) for a millihertz-linewidth laser could one day help improve the stability of the best clocks by two orders of magnitude—which would improve applications such as GPS, synchronization of data networks, and tests of the fundamental laws of physics, among others. The laser would emit light directly from an ultranarrow clock transition—avoiding thermal noise and producing a linewidth smaller even than the clock transition itself—by forcing an ensemble of atoms to emit energy collectively instead of individually.

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