{"id":798135,"date":"2026-10-10T13:58:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:58:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798135\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T13:58:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T13:58:22","slug":"a-nuclear-clock-synchronized-to-229th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/798135\/","title":{"rendered":"A nuclear clock synchronized to 229Th"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fluorescence-signal analysis<\/p>\n<p>The fluorescence spectra of S1 and TS1 were obtained by correcting for two effects in the measured fluorescence signals. Residual excited-state population from preceding measurements was removed using a procedure adapted from refs. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 14\" title=\"Tiedau, J. et al. Laser excitation of the Th-229 nucleus. Phys. Rev. Lett. 132, 182501 (2024).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR14\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e2427\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">14<\/a>,<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 17\" title=\"Ooi, T. et al. Frequency reproducibility of solid-state thorium-229 nuclear clocks. Nature 650, 72&#x2013;78 (2026).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR17\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e2430\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">17<\/a>, whereas variations in the excitation were corrected using the monitored transmitted VUV power during each excitation interval.<\/p>\n<p>For each spectrum, the fluorescence records from all frequency points i are fitted jointly to <\/p>\n<p>$${C}_{i}(t)=B+{A}_{i}\\exp (-t\/{\\tau }_{e}),$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (2)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where t is measured from the beginning of the acquisition window, Ai is the fluorescence amplitude at the beginning of that window and B is a common constant background count rate for the corresponding spectrum. The lifetime is fixed to the independently measured value \u03c4e\u00a0=\u00a0631\u2009s.<\/p>\n<p>Because fluorescence acquisition of each frequency point begins before the residual excited-state population from previous acquisitions has decayed fully, the measured fluorescence records contain contributions from earlier excitations. The net fluorescence amplitude at each frequency point is therefore obtained by subtracting the preceding-point amplitude extrapolated to the start of the current fluorescence acquisition window: <\/p>\n<p>$${A}_{i,{\\rm{net}}}={A}_{i}-{A}_{i-1}\\exp \\,\\left[-\\frac{{t}_{i,\\det }-{t}_{i-1,\\det }}{{\\tau }_{e}}\\right],$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (3)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where \\({t}_{i,\\det }\\) and \\({t}_{i-1,\\det }\\) are the start times of the fluorescence acquisition windows of the current and previous frequency points, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>To correct for variations in the excitation arising from VUV power fluctuations, the transmitted VUV power is monitored during each excitation interval. In the weak-excitation regime, the excited-state population generated during an infinitesimal excitation interval of dt is proportional to the instantaneous transmitted VUV power P(t), whereas population excited at an earlier time is reduced by spontaneous decay before the fluorescence acquisition window<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 48\" title=\"Kazakov, G. et al. Performance of a 229Thorium solid-state nuclear clock. New J. Phys. 14, 083019 (2012).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR48\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e2777\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">48<\/a>,<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 49\" title=\"von der Wense, L. et al. The theory of direct laser excitation of nuclear transitions. Eur. Phys. J. A 56, 1&#x2013;22 (2020).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR49\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e2780\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">49<\/a>. The effective excitation dose for the frequency point i is therefore <\/p>\n<p>$${D}_{i}={\\int }_{{t}_{i,{\\rm{on}}}}^{{t}_{i,{\\rm{off}}}}P(t)\\exp \\,\\left[-\\frac{{t}_{i,\\det }-t}{{\\tau }_{e}}\\right]dt,$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (4)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where ti,on and ti,off denote the start and end of the excitation interval of frequency point i.<\/p>\n<p>The net fluorescence amplitude is then normalized to the effective excitation dose to obtain a corrected fluorescence response: <\/p>\n<p>$${F}_{i}=\\frac{{A}_{i,{\\rm{net}}}}{{D}_{i}}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (5)\n                <\/p>\n<p>This normalization makes the corrected fluorescence response insensitive to the frequency point acquisition order and variations in the VUV excitation.<\/p>\n<p>The corrected fluorescence responses Fi constitute the fluorescence spectrum for each spectral component s. The spectrum is fitted to a single-Lorentzian profile <\/p>\n<p>$${F}_{s}(\\nu )={F}_{0,s}+\\frac{{H}_{s}}{1+4{[(\\nu -{\\nu }_{0,s})\/\\Delta {\\nu }_{s}]}^{2}},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (6)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where F0,s is the constant offset, Hs is the Lorentzian peak height, \u03bd0,s is the line-centre frequency and \u0394\u03bds is the FWHM. Applying this Lorentzian fit to TS1 yields linewidths of \u0394\u03bdb\u00a0=\u00a027(1)\u2009kHz, \u0394\u03bdc\u00a0=\u00a039(2)\u2009kHz and \u0394\u03bdQU\u00a0=\u00a00.898(5)\u2009MHz.<\/p>\n<p>For the narrow QR transitions, the spectra of lines a\u2013d in both S1 and TS1 show evidence of a broad pedestal in addition to the narrow central component. A representative example, line b in TS1, is shown in Extended Data Fig. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#Fig4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">1<\/a>. The pedestal could reflect an inhomogeneously broadened subensemble of QR sites, arising from variations in the local fluoride environment, lattice strain or nearby defects, although its microscopic origin remains to be established.<\/p>\n<p>Absorption signal analysis<\/p>\n<p>To extract transition linewidths and on-resonance fractional absorptions, we fit the demodulated absorption signals to the first-harmonic response of a sinusoidally frequency-modulated Lorentzian line shape.<\/p>\n<p>For each spectral component s\u00a0\u2208\u00a0{b,\u00a0c,\u00a0QU}, the measured normalized demodulated absorption signal is <\/p>\n<p>$${S}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}(\\bar{\\nu })\\equiv \\frac{{V}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}(\\bar{\\nu })}{{V}_{{\\rm{DC}}}(\\bar{\\nu })},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (7)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where \\({V}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}(\\bar{\\nu })\\) is the in-phase first-harmonic voltage recorded by the lock-in amplifier in the root-mean-square units and \\({V}_{{\\rm{DC}}}(\\bar{\\nu })\\) is the direct current signal of the simultaneously monitored transmitted VUV light.<\/p>\n<p>The normalized demodulated absorption signal is modelled as <\/p>\n<p>$${S}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}(\\bar{\\nu })=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}{A}_{s}{{\\mathcal{D}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu })+{E}_{s},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (8)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where As\u00a0\u2261\u00a0(Poff\u00a0\u2212\u00a0Pon,s)\/Poff is the on-resonance fractional absorption of the VUV light, with Poff the off-resonant transmitted power and Pon,s the transmitted power at the centre of spectral component s without frequency modulation. Es is a fitted constant offset. The function \\({{\\mathcal{D}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu })\\) is the first-harmonic response function for a unit-height Lorentzian absorption profile \\({{\\mathcal{L}}}_{s}(\\nu )\\), <\/p>\n<p>$${{\\mathcal{D}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu })=\\frac{1}{{\\rm{\\pi }}}{\\int }_{0}^{2{\\rm{\\pi }}}{{\\mathcal{L}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu }+{\\delta }_{s}\\cos \\theta )\\cos \\theta \\,d\\theta ,$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (9)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where <\/p>\n<p>$${{\\mathcal{L}}}_{s}(\\nu )={\\left[1+4{\\left(\\frac{\\nu -{\\nu }_{0,s}}{\\Delta {\\nu }_{s}}\\right)}^{2}\\right]}^{-1}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (10)\n                <\/p>\n<p>Here \\(\\bar{\\nu }\\) is the mean laser frequency, \u03b4s is the modulation amplitude, \u03b8 is the modulation phase, \u03bd0,s is the line-centre frequency and \u0394\u03bds is the Lorentzian FWHM. Fits of (<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"equation anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#Equ8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">8<\/a>) to the measured normalized demodulated signals yield the on-resonance fractional absorptions As and transition linewidths \u0394\u03bds.<\/p>\n<p>The 1-s absorption SNR in the main text is defined as the peak amplitude of the normalized demodulated absorption signal divided by the s.d. of the signal baseline projected to a 1-s measurement time: <\/p>\n<p>$${{\\rm{SNR}}}_{1{\\rm{s}}}\\equiv \\frac{{\\max }_{\\bar{\\nu }}| {S}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}| }{{\\sigma }_{1{\\rm{s}}}[{S}_{1f,s}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}]}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (11)\n                <\/p>\n<p>In the photon-shot-noise limit, it reduces to <\/p>\n<p>$$\\begin{array}{l}{{\\rm{SNR}}}_{1{\\rm{s,SN}}}\\,\\simeq \\frac{{A}_{s}{\\max }_{\\bar{\\nu }}| {{\\mathcal{D}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu })| \/\\sqrt{2}}{\\sqrt{1\/[\\mathop{{N}_{e}}\\limits^{.}\\cdot (1\\,{\\rm{s}})]}}\\\\ \\,=\\,{k}_{s}\\,{A}_{s}\\sqrt{{\\mathop{N}\\limits^{.}}_{e}\\cdot (1\\,{\\rm{s}})},\\end{array}$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (12)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where \\(\\mathop{{N}_{e}}\\limits^{.}\\) is the detected photoelectron rate and \\({k}_{s}=\\frac{1}{\\sqrt{2}}{\\max }_{\\bar{\\nu }}| {{\\mathcal{D}}}_{s}(\\bar{\\nu })| \\) is the proportionality factor for the spectral component s. The dependence of the \\({{\\rm{SNR}}}_{1{\\rm{s,SN}}}\\) on both As and \\({\\mathop{N}\\limits^{.}}_{e}\\) motivates the successive improvements to the detector and crystal used in absorption spectroscopy and clock operation.<\/p>\n<p>Resonant steady-state excitation fraction<\/p>\n<p>To quantify the resonant nuclear excitation throughout the crystal, we calculate the depth-dependent steady-state excitation fraction ps(z) for the laser tuned to the centre of each spectral component, s\u00a0\u2208\u00a0{b,\u00a0c,\u00a0QU}, following ref. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 49\" title=\"von der Wense, L. et al. The theory of direct laser excitation of nuclear transitions. Eur. Phys. J. A 56, 1&#x2013;22 (2020).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR49\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e4863\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">49<\/a>. In the weak-excitation regime, <\/p>\n<p>$${p}_{s}(z)={\\Gamma }_{{\\rm{exc}}}^{(s)}(z){\\tau }_{e},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (13)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where \\({\\Gamma }_{{\\rm{exc}}}^{(s)}(z)\\) is the excitation rate and \u03c4e is the measured nuclear lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>The Rabi frequency for component s is <\/p>\n<p>$${\\Omega }_{s}(z)={\\left[\\frac{2{\\rm{\\pi }}{c}^{2}I(z){\\chi }_{s}{\\Gamma }_{\\gamma }}{\\hbar {\\omega }_{0}^{3}}\\right]}^{1\/2},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (14)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where I(z) is the local VUV intensity, \u03c90 is the angular nuclear-transition frequency, \u0393\u03b3\u00a0\u2243\u00a02\u03c0\u00a0\u00d7\u00a063 \u03bcHz is the radiative decay rate calculated from the measured excited-state lifetime and \u03c7s is the effective line-strength factor. For s\u00a0=\u00a0b,\u00a0c and QU, the effective line-strength factors are, respectively, <\/p>\n<p>$$({\\chi }_{b},{\\chi }_{c},{\\chi }_{{\\rm{QU}}})=\\left(\\frac{2}{9},\\frac{1}{5},\\frac{2}{3}\\right).$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (15)\n                <\/p>\n<p>These values are obtained by summing the squared Clebsch\u2013Gordan coefficients over the unresolved magnetic-sublevel transitions and averaging the resulting coupling strengths over the orientations of the effective quantization axes relative to the laser polarization<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 48\" title=\"Kazakov, G. et al. Performance of a 229Thorium solid-state nuclear clock. New J. Phys. 14, 083019 (2012).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR48\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e5348\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">48<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Because resonant nuclear absorption is negligible compared with the off-resonant propagation loss, the local VUV intensity is approximated as <\/p>\n<p>$$I(z)\\simeq \\frac{{P}_{{\\rm{in}}}(1-R)}{{S}_{{\\rm{beam}}}}\\exp (-{\\alpha }_{{\\rm{nr}}}z),$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (16)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where Pin is the incident VUV power and Sbeam is the effective illuminated area. The Fresnel reflectance and effective off-resonant attenuation coefficient are <\/p>\n<p>$$\\begin{array}{l}\\,R\\,=\\,{\\left(\\frac{n-1}{n+1}\\right)}^{2},\\\\ {\\alpha }_{{\\rm{nr}}}\\,=\\,-\\frac{1}{L}\\text{ln}\\,\\left[\\frac{{T}_{{\\rm{xtal}}}}{{(1-R)}^{2}}\\right],\\end{array}$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (17)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where n is the refractive index of CaF2, L is the crystal length and Txtal is the measured off-resonant transmission through the crystal. For S1 and TS1, Txtal is approximately 1% over 9.8\u2009mm and 7% over 4.94\u2009mm, corresponding to equivalent 1-mm internal transmittances of 63% and 60%, respectively.<\/p>\n<p>For a spectral component with measured FWHM \u0394\u03bds, the resonant excitation rate in the weak-excitation regime is<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 49\" title=\"von der Wense, L. et al. The theory of direct laser excitation of nuclear transitions. Eur. Phys. J. A 56, 1&#x2013;22 (2020).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR49\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e5693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">49<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>$${\\Gamma }_{{\\rm{exc}}}^{(s)}(z)=\\frac{{\\Omega }_{s}^{2}(z)}{2{\\rm{\\pi }}\\Delta {\\nu }_{s}},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (18)\n                <\/p>\n<p>giving <\/p>\n<p>$${p}_{s}(z)=\\frac{{\\Omega }_{s}^{2}(z){\\tau }_{e}}{2{\\rm{\\pi }}\\Delta {\\nu }_{s}}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (19)\n                <\/p>\n<p>Using an incident VUV power of approximately 5\u2009\u03bcW with a Gaussian-beam 1\/e2\u00a0 intensity diameter of approximately 1\u2009mm, together with the measured linewidths and off-resonant transmissions of S1 and TS1, we evaluate ps(z) for the b, c and QU components throughout each crystal. The resulting depth-dependent excitation fractions are shown in Fig. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"figure anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#Fig2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2i,j<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For the present experimental parameters, the entrance surface Rabi frequencies are \u03a9s\u00a0&lt;\u00a02\u03c0\u00a0\u00d7\u00a01\u2009Hz, more than two orders of magnitude smaller than both the crystal-induced optical-decoherence rates and the magnetic-sublevel-mixing rates, which are of order 2\u03c0\u00a0\u00d7\u00a0102\u2009Hz<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 4\" title=\"Rellergert, W. G. et al. Constraining the evolution of the fundamental constants with a solid-state optical frequency reference based on the 229Th nucleus. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 200802 (2010).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR4\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e5960\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">4<\/a>,<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 48\" title=\"Kazakov, G. et al. Performance of a 229Thorium solid-state nuclear clock. New J. Phys. 14, 083019 (2012).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR48\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e5963\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">48<\/a>. This hierarchy justifies the excitation rate treatment used above, with the measured ensemble linewidth \u0394\u03bds providing the effective linewidth of each spectral component.<\/p>\n<p>Frequency discriminator optimization<\/p>\n<p>To minimize the measurement-noise contribution to the fractional frequency instability of the nuclear clock, we optimize the modulation amplitude to maximize the slope of the frequency discriminator at the centre of line b. Following the standard stability analysis for atomic clocks<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 2\" title=\"Ludlow, A. D., Boyd, M. M., Ye, J., Peik, E. &amp; Schmidt, P. O. Optical atomic clocks. Rev. Mod. Phys. 87, 637&#x2013;701 (2015).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR2\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e5981\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2<\/a>, the fractional frequency instability arising from statistically independent cycle-to-cycle measurement noise is <\/p>\n<p>$${\\sigma }_{y}(\\tau )=\\frac{{\\sigma }_{S}}{{\\nu }_{0}\\,{g}_{b}}{\\left(\\frac{{T}_{{\\rm{c}}}}{\\tau }\\right)}^{1\/2},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (20)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where \u03c3S is the fluctuation of the normalized demodulated absorption signal at the line centre, \u03bd0 is the nuclear-transition frequency, Tc is the clock-cycle duration, \u03c4 is the averaging time and <\/p>\n<p>$${g}_{b}\\equiv {\\left|\\frac{\\partial {S}_{1f,b}^{{\\rm{RMS}}}(\\bar{\\nu })}{\\partial \\bar{\\nu }}\\right|}_{\\bar{\\nu }={\\nu }_{0,b}}=\\frac{{A}_{b}}{\\sqrt{2}}{\\left|\\frac{\\partial {{\\mathcal{D}}}_{b}(\\bar{\\nu })}{\\partial \\bar{\\nu }}\\right|}_{\\bar{\\nu }={\\nu }_{0,b}}$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (21)\n                <\/p>\n<p>is the magnitude of the discriminator slope at the line centre. Provided that \u03c3S is approximately independent of the modulation amplitude over the relevant range, maximizing gb minimizes the corresponding contribution to the clock instability.<\/p>\n<p>For a Lorentzian line with FWHM \u0394\u03bdb and peak modulation amplitude \u03b4b, the discriminator slope is <\/p>\n<p>$${g}_{b}={A}_{b}\\frac{4\\sqrt{2}{\\delta }_{b}}{\\Delta {\\nu }_{b}^{2}}{\\left[1+4{\\left(\\frac{{\\delta }_{b}}{\\Delta {\\nu }_{b}}\\right)}^{2}\\right]}^{-3\/2}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (22)\n                <\/p>\n<p>Maximizing gb with respect to \u03b4b gives <\/p>\n<p>$${\\delta }_{b,{\\rm{opt}}}=\\frac{\\Delta {\\nu }_{b}}{2\\sqrt{2}}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (23)\n                <\/p>\n<p>For the measured b-line linewidth \u0394\u03bdb\u00a0=\u00a027(1)kHz, the modulation amplitude that maximizes the line-centre discriminator slope is \u03b4b,opt\u00a0\u2243\u00a09.5\u2009kHz. A slightly larger modulation amplitude provides a wider monotonic frequency discrimination range and hence greater tolerance to frequency excursions during feedback operation. We therefore use a near-optimal \u03b4b\u00a0=\u00a012\u2009kHz, which increases the width of the monotonic frequency discrimination range by approximately 13% while retaining 96.4% of the maximum line-centre slope. At this modulation amplitude, the discriminator slope is <\/p>\n<p>$${g}_{b}=1.05{A}_{b}\/\\Delta {\\nu }_{b}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (24)\n                <\/p>\n<p>Clock instability at photon-shot-noise limit<\/p>\n<p>We estimate the photon-shot-noise-limited fractional frequency instability of the optimized TS1\u2009+\u2009phototube configuration from the detected VUV power. The detected photoelectron rate is \\({\\mathop{N}\\limits^{.}}_{e}={\\eta }_{\\det }{P}_{\\det }\/(h{\\nu }_{0})\\), where \\({P}_{\\det }\\) is the detected VUV power and \\({\\eta }_{\\det }\\) is the phototube quantum efficiency. For a measurement time Tm, the photon-shot-noise-limited s.d. of the normalized demodulated absorption signal is<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 50\" title=\"Bjorklund, G. C., Levenson, M. D., Lenth, W. &amp; Ortiz, C. Frequency modulation (FM) spectroscopy: theory of lineshapes and signal-to-noise analysis. Appl. Phys. B 32, 145&#x2013;152 (1983).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR50\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e6989\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">50<\/a><\/p>\n<p>$${\\sigma }_{S,{\\rm{SN}}}={\\left(\\frac{1}{{\\mathop{N}\\limits^{.}}_{e}{T}_{{\\rm{m}}}}\\right)}^{1\/2}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (25)\n                <\/p>\n<p>Substituting this expression into (<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-track-action=\"equation anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#Equ20\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">20<\/a>) and using the near-optimized discriminator slope gb\u00a0=\u00a01.05Ab\/\u0394\u03bdb gives <\/p>\n<p>$${\\sigma }_{y}(\\tau )=\\frac{\\Delta {\\nu }_{b}}{1.05\\,{\\nu }_{0}\\,{A}_{b}}{\\left(\\frac{h{\\nu }_{0}}{{\\eta }_{\\det }{P}_{\\det }\\tau }\\right)}^{1\/2}{\\left(\\frac{{T}_{{\\rm{c}}}}{{T}_{{\\rm{m}}}}\\right)}^{1\/2}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (26)\n                <\/p>\n<p>For the optimized TS1 + phototube configuration, we use \\({P}_{\\det }=350\\,{\\rm{nW}}\\), \\({\\eta }_{\\det }\\simeq 0.10\\), Ab\u00a0=\u00a02.9\u00a0\u00d7\u00a010\u22124, \u0394\u03bdb\u00a0=\u00a027\u2009kHz, Tm\u00a0=\u00a010.0s and Tc\u00a0=\u00a011.8s, yielding <\/p>\n<p>$${\\sigma }_{y}(\\tau )\\simeq 2.9\\times 1{0}^{-13}\/\\sqrt{\\tau \/{\\rm{s}}}.$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (27)\n                <\/p>\n<p>The measured instability of \\(5\\times 1{0}^{-13}\/\\sqrt{\\tau \/{\\rm{s}}}\\) is within a factor of two of this limit, indicating near-photon-shot-noise-limited operation. The remaining difference can be accounted for partly by the gradual decrease in detected VUV power during the measurement.<\/p>\n<p>Absolute-frequency determination<\/p>\n<p>For the absolute-frequency measurements of line b in S1 and TS1 at a crystal temperature of 301.4(1)\u2009K, the VUV laser is stabilized to the centre of the corresponding absorption resonance. The locked VUV frequency is determined through the comb-referenced optical chain used for VUV generation, including the comb mode numbers, optical beat notes, AOM shifts and fixed RF offsets. All RF synthesizers and frequency counters are referenced to a common 10-MHz hydrogen maser signal. The reconstructed frequency is corrected for the fractional frequency offset of the hydrogen maser relative to International Atomic Time, using the monthly International Atomic Time clock-rate data for the corresponding measurement periods.<\/p>\n<p>The resulting b-line centre frequencies are <\/p>\n<p>$$\\begin{array}{l}{\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{S1}}}\\,=\\,\\mathrm{2,020,407,298,798.077}{(63)}_{{\\rm{stat}}}{(185)}_{{\\rm{sys}}}\\,{\\rm{kHz}},\\\\ {\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{TS1}}}\\,=\\,\\mathrm{2,020,407,298,798.635}{(20)}_{{\\rm{stat}}}{(185)}_{{\\rm{sys}}}\\,{\\rm{kHz}}.\\end{array}$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (28)\n                <\/p>\n<p>The first set of parentheses gives the 1\u03c3 statistical uncertainty, and the second gives the systematic uncertainty. These systematic uncertainties arise from the 0.1\u2009K absolute crystal temperature uncertainty, dominated by the sensor calibration, propagated through the local temperature coefficient of line b reported in ref. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 17\" title=\"Ooi, T. et al. Frequency reproducibility of solid-state thorium-229 nuclear clocks. Nature 650, 72&#x2013;78 (2026).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR17\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e7723\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">17<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Inter-laboratory frequency comparison<\/p>\n<p>For comparison with the JILA measurements, we fit the publicly available C10 and C13 source data<a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 43\" title=\"Ooi, T. et al. Th-229 nuclear clock frequency record (JILA). Zenodo &#010;                https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5281\/zenodo.15751158&#010;                &#010;               (2025).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR43\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e7735\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">43<\/a> using the quadratic temperature-dependence model reported in ref. <a data-track=\"click\" data-track-action=\"reference anchor\" data-track-label=\"link\" data-test=\"citation-ref\" aria-label=\"Reference 17\" title=\"Ooi, T. et al. Frequency reproducibility of solid-state thorium-229 nuclear clocks. Nature 650, 72&#x2013;78 (2026).\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-11122-1#ref-CR17\" id=\"ref-link-section-d219339886e7739\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">17<\/a>. Evaluating the fit at our crystal temperature of 301.4(1)\u2009K yields <\/p>\n<p>$${\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{JILA}}}\\,=\\,\\mathrm{2,020,407,298,798.58}(122)\\,{\\rm{kHz}},$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (29)\n                <\/p>\n<p>where the 1\u03c3 uncertainty combines in quadrature the 1.21\u2009kHz fit uncertainty and the 0.185\u2009kHz contribution from the uncertainty of our crystal temperature.<\/p>\n<p>The offsets of the S1 and TS1 measurements from the JILA value are <\/p>\n<p>$$\\begin{array}{l}\\,{\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{S1}}}-{\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{JILA}}}\\,=\\,-0.50(122)\\,{\\rm{kHz}},\\\\ {\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{TS1}}}-{\\nu }_{b,{\\rm{JILA}}}\\,=\\,+0.06(122)\\,{\\rm{kHz}}.\\end{array}$$<\/p>\n<p>\n                    (30)\n                <\/p>\n<p>The agreement within the combined standard uncertainties verifies the reproducibility of the b-line frequency across independently fabricated crystals and independent experimental platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fluorescence-signal analysis The fluorescence spectra of S1 and TS1 were obtained by correcting for two effects in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61410,59,4230,4231,26783,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-798135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-atomic-and-molecular-physics","tag-gb","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-quantum-metrology","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}