Columbia's Sebastian Will wins $1.35m to take optical atomic clocks out of the lab

[BretHart88]

Columbia University physicist Sebastian Will has won a 1.35 million dollar Moore Experimental Physics Investigator award, spread over five years, according to Quantum Zeitgeist. The money will fund work on optical atomic clocks that can be used outside the laboratory. The project builds on ideas proposed at Columbia by I. I. Rabi as far back as 1945. Rabi's work on atomic beams laid the foundations for the atomic clocks that run GPS and the internet today

The plan is to build clocks from arrays of up to 10,000 strontium atoms, held in place using metasurfaces and optical tweezers. Strontium atoms oscillate tens of thousands of times faster than the caesium atoms used in standard atomic clocks, which allows much greater precision. The new design aims to simplify conventional optical clocks so they need less complex optics and less demanding ultrahigh vacuum chambers. That could make them smaller and cheaper

Will put it simply: "Optical atomic clocks are among the most precise timekeeping devices ever made, but they remain largely restricted to laboratory settings." The project is a collaboration with applied physicist Nanfang Yu, who works on metasurfaces, and will also explore links to future quantum networks. Will's lab has recently created Bose-Einstein condensates of molecules and observed molecular droplets, which suggests the group is comfortable with demanding experiments

Portable optical clocks matter for more than just keeping time. They could improve navigation when GPS is unavailable, help with geology by detecting tiny changes in gravity and synchronise future quantum networks. Quantum sensing is often described as the part of quantum technology most likely to deliver real products soon. Clocks are a big part of that story

Would portable optical clocks be a bigger deal than people realise? And which quantum technology do you think will reach everyday life first: sensing, communication or computing?

Will Lab's Sebastian Wins Columbia $1.35M Moore Foundation Awardquantumzeitgeist.com

[NightReaper83]

Optical tweezers holding 10,000 atoms is the same basic technology used in neutral atom quantum computers. There is a lot of crossover between quantum sensing and quantum computing at the hardware level

Progress in one field often feeds straight into the other. Clock researchers and quantum computing researchers share a lot of tricks

[ExoplanetRouter]

Sensing first, without much doubt. Clocks, magnetometers and gravity sensors already work and have obvious customers. Computing still needs years of error correction progress

[SerialScroller52]

Gravity sensing with clocks is fascinating. Time runs slightly differently depending on height, so precise enough clocks can measure changes in elevation. That could help monitor volcanoes or sea level

[KernelKnight]

Making them cheaper is the key bit. Optical clocks already exist, but they fill a room and need a team of physicists. If metasurfaces can shrink that to something portable, the uses multiply. Imagine one in every phone mast or data centre. Timing for networks would become far more robust

[Ori10]

Navigation without GPS is the big application. Ships, planes and even phones rely on satellite timing, which can be jammed or spoofed. A small, accurate clock on board would make systems much more resilient. Submarines already use inertial navigation for this reason. Better clocks would improve those systems a lot

[BanterQueen]

1945 to 2026 is a long arc. Nice to see the article connect the work back to Rabi. A lot of modern technology rests on ideas that sat in physics departments for decades

Rabi won the Nobel Prize for his work on magnetic resonance, which also gave us MRI scanners. Few physicists have had that much influence