Three teams find a way to measure frequencies with far better precision than previous techniques

(Phys.org)—Three teams working independently have found a nearly identical way to boost the resolution of quantum magnetic sensors, allowing frequency measurements with far higher precision than previous techniques. Two teams, one with ETH Zurich, the other based at Ulm University in Germany, have published their results in the journal Science. The third team working at Harvard has yet to publish their results, though they have uploaded a copy of their paper to the arXiv preprint server. Andrew Jordan with the University of Rochester in the U.S. has published a Perspective piece in the same Science issue outlining the work by the teams and notes the “multiple independent discovery,” which is interesting in and of itself.