Quantum Entanglement in Atomic clocks

Subject : Science & Tech

Context :Researchers have quantum entangled atomic clocks, allowing them to be synchronised more accurately.

Concept :

Two atomic clocks have been connected using quantum entanglement – a property that intrinsically links them so that changes in one instantaneously affect the other.
The connection makes it easier to synchronise the clocks, which could be used to make more accurate measurements of dark matter and gravity.

Atomic Clocks

Atomic clocks consist of atoms that are very precisely controlled by lasers.
It is a device that uses the energy emitted by the sample of atoms as a frequency standard for the timekeeping devices. When electrons gain energy, they jump from an orbital of lower energy to an orbital with higher energy.
This electron can either stay in this new orbit or come back to its original state after emitting some radiation.
Since the energy supplied is most often limited the electron soon emits microwave radiation and jumps back to its original orbit. This is one cycle between two energy levels.
The definition of a second was revised to be the time taken by 9,19,26,31,770 oscillations of a cesium atom. At the start of the 21st century, the cesium clocks that were available were so accurate that they would gain or lose a second only once in about 20 million years.
At present, even this record has been broken and there are “optical lattice clocks” that are so precise that they lose a second only once in 15 billion years.

Quantum entanglement

It is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated.
It is the physical phenomenon that occurs when a pair or group of particles is generated, interact, in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the pair or group cannot be described independently of the state of the others.