Light Synchronization Technique Heralds a Bright New Chapter for Small Atomic Clocks

In an effort to improve atomic clocks, JQI Fellow Kartik Srinivasan and his colleagues have been exploring how light is altered as it races repeatedly around a minuscule track on a chip. In an article in Nature, they describe a new way to use the devices to make precision measurements of light. The new technique might eliminate the need for several large, energy-hungry components in next-generation optical atomic clocks and other metrology tasks.