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Nuclear clocks tick for the first time

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Ultraprecise clocks that use transitions in atomic nuclei to keep time show promise as a next-generation time standard and for probing fundamental physics.

By

  1. Akio Kawasaki

    1. Akio Kawasaki is at the National Metrology Institute of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8563, Japan.

For decades, the most precise timekeepers have been atomic clocks. The mechanism of these clocks relies on the transition of electrons between the energy levels of atoms or ions. But some applications require even more precise timepieces — such as nuclear clocks, which depend on transitions that occur in the nuclei of atoms. Writing in Nature, Toscani De Col et al.1 and Huang et al.2 report the first implementations of a nuclear clock, a milestone in the field of metrology. Toscani De Col et al. also demonstrate that their clock shows promise for detecting a possible form of dark matter — the invisible material that makes up most of the matter in the Universe.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03060-9

References

  1. Toscani De Col, L. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11084-4 (2026).

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  2. Huang, B. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11084-4 (2026).

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  3. Aeppli, A., Kim, K., Warfield, W., Safronova, M. S. & Ye, J. Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 023401 (2024).

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  4. Zhang, B. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 053202 (2026).

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  9. Arvanitaki, A., Huang, J. & Van Tilburg, K. Phys. Rev. D 91, 015015 (2015).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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