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Nature Physics 5, 382–383 (1 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/nphys1296

Millihertz-linewidth lasers: A sharper laser

Uwe Sterr & Christian Lisdat

Optical radiation from trapped atoms can produce laser emission with unprecedented spectral purity and coherence properties — surpassing the linewidth of current lasers, which is limited by the Brownian motion of the optical reference cavity. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Dominic Meiser and co-workers show that this idea has the potential to improve the stability of optical lattice clocks by two orders of magnitude.