Friction: what you want from car brakes, otherwise rather a nuisance. In any case, it is useful to know as precisely as possible how friction phenomena arise — and not only on the macroscopic scale (like in mechanical engineering), but also on the microscopic scale (i.e. in areas such as biology and nanotechnology). It was […]
The Sharpest Laser in the World
No one had ever come so close to the ideal laser before: theoretically, laser light has only one single color (also frequency or wavelength). In reality, however, there is always a certain linewidth. With a linewidth of only 10 mHz, the laser that the researchers from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have now developed together with […]
A Deep Look Into a Single Molecule
The interaction of thermal energy from the environment with motional degrees of freedom is well known and often referred to as Brownian motion (also thermal motion). But in the case of polar molecules, the internal degrees of freedom — in particular the rotational quantum state — are also influenced by the thermal radiation. So far, […]
The Most Accurate Optical Single-Ion Clock Worldwide
Atomic clock experts from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) are the first research group in the world to have built an optical single-ion clock which attains an accuracy which had only been predicted theoretically so far. As early as 1981, Hans Dehmelt, who was to be awarded a Nobel prize later, had already developed the basic […]