Researchers Build Speckle-Based Spectrometer With Six-Femtometre Resolution

At a glance

Researchers led by Adelaide University built a light-measuring device that can detect wavelength differences as small as six femtometres. It uses the speckle pattern, the grainy light pattern formed when laser light scatters, to read the light.

Key points

1. 1

   The team let light bounce many times inside an integrating sphere, a hollow reflective chamber.

2. 2

   They used the device to measure the hyperfine structure of rubidium atoms.

3. 3

   This is the first direct measurement of atomic hyperfine structure made with a speckle-based spectrometer.

4. 4

   The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Why it matters

The method could support precision tools such as atomic clocks, quantum technologies, pollution monitoring and medical diagnosis.