Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition

@article{Wense2016DirectDO,
title={Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition},
author={Lars von der Wense and Benedict Seiferle and Mustapha Laatiaoui and J{\"u}rgen B. Neumayr and Hans-J{\"o}rg Maier and H-F. Wirth and Ch. Mokry and J{\"o}rg Runke and Klaus Eberhardt and Christoph E D{\"u}llmann and Norbert Trautmann and Peter G Thirolf},
journal={Nature},
year={2016},
volume={533},
pages={47-51}
}
Today’s most precise time and frequency measurements are performed with optical atomic clocks. However, it has been proposed that they could potentially be outperformed by a nuclear clock, which employs a nuclear transition instead of an atomic shell transition. There is only one known nuclear state that could serve as a nuclear clock using currently available technology, namely, the isomeric first excited state of 229Th (denoted 229mTh). Here we report the direct detection of this nuclear… Expand
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