Researchers at the National University of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies have claimed the top spot in global timekeeping. The team built two lutetium-ion clocks featuring evaluated fractional uncertainties of 1.2 and 1.3 multiplied by ten to the power of minus nineteen. This level of precision translates to an error rate of roughly one second every 264 billion years, outperforming competing devices from the United States and China.
The newly crowned standard outperforms the previous record-holder from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan by a factor of 3.7, and beats an aluminum-ion clock unveiled by NIST by 4.6 times. To confirm the findings, the Singapore team compared their two independent clocks over 200 hours using correlation spectroscopy. This method cancels out noise from a shared laser, resulting in a precise comparison that agreed to within 5.7 multiplied by ten to the power of minus nineteen.
Significantly, the breakthrough was achieved at room temperature using commercially available lasers and basic linear Paul traps without magnetic shielding. This design contrasts with other ultra-precise systems, such as Wuhan's calcium clock, which requires liquid nitrogen cooling to suppress blackbody radiation. Team leader Murray Barrett noted the setup could maintain its performance across extreme environments ranging from Death Valley to Antarctica.
The timing of the breakthrough coincides with ongoing international debates regarding the official definition of the second, which has relied on cesium since 1967. While optical clocks now vastly outperform cesium standards, international bodies have yet to reach a consensus on a replacement. The Singapore research group now plans to miniaturize their laboratory-scale system into a transportable device for broader cross-verification against other institutions.
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