Tag: quantum mechanics

A rock is a clock: physicist uses matter to tell time

A rock is a clock, says Berkeley physicist

January 10, 2013:

What is the simplest, most fundamental clock? UC Berkeley physicist Holger Müller and his colleagues have shown that a single atom is sufficient to measure time. Conversely, the frequency of matter can be used to define its mass.

Engineers watch photons going out for a spin

March 21, 2013:

Engineers at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab have created a 2D sheet of gold nanoantennas to get the strongest signal yet of the photonic spin Hall effect, an optical phenomenon of quantum mechanics that could play a prominent role in how information is encoded and processed in computing.