News
23.07.2014
Winding up the most accurate clock in the world
Excellence Initiative brings Distinguished Professor Hidetoshi Katori to Tübingen for 3 years
Renowned Japanese physicist Professor Hidetoshi Katori of the University of Tokyo and Japan’s famous RIKEN research institute will be a Distinguished Professor at the University of Tübingen for the next three years. Professor Katori specializes in super-accurate atomic clocks and will be carrying out research for extended periods at the Institute of Physics at the University of Tübingen. He will also make a valuable contribution to teaching here in Tübingen and will lecture on the special aspects of his research.
Hidetoshi Katori has been a Physics professor at the University of Tokyo since 1999. In 2011 he became director of research at RIKEN’s Quantum Metrology Laboratory, where his projects include an innovative space-time project. Professor Katori has worked in Germany before, at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics near Munich from 1994 to 1997.
Until recently, the most accurate clocks known to science were based on the measurement of the electromagnetic spectrum of single ions. Hidetoshi Katori has pushed back the barriers to precision with a new method – he replaced the single, charged ion with many neutral atoms arranged in a lattice and took his measurements from these. This development is now considered to make the most accurate clock in the world.
Such super-accurate measurement of time is needed to examine issues such as how constant physical constants really are. Atomic clocks are also particularly precise sensors of gravity, and can be used to measure the tiniest movement in the Earth.
“It is the start of a collaboration which I am very much looking forward to,” says Professor József Fortágh of Tübingen’s Center for Quantum Science. The two researchers are planning to work together on experiments, to share ideas, and to exchange students, graduate students and postdocs between Tübingen and Tokyo. “Professor Katori has taken groundbreaking ideas and research into the field of atomic clocks. We aim to build on this experiment in the coming years, and we complement one another well in our research.” They plan to integrate high-precision atomic clocks into microchips – which could result in new findings for basic research as well as creating new, mobile sensors. “These could be put into navigation systems or used as quantum sensors for measuring altitude.”
Contact:
Professor Dr. Hidetoshi Katori
<link mail ein fenster zum versenden der>katori[at]amo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Professor Dr. József Fortágh
University of Tübingen
Science Faculty
Institute of Physics
Phone: +49 7071 29-76270
<link mail ein fenster zum versenden der>fortagh[at]uni-tuebingen.de