TÜBİTAK National Metrology Institute will develop Turkey's first optical atomic clock in a joint project with the Russian Metrology Institute of Technical Physics and Radio Engineering (VNIIFTRI).

Following the visit of a delegation headed by Prof. Dr. Sergey I. DONCHENKO, General Director of the Russian Institute of Metrology and Radio Engineering Institution of Russian Technical Physics, to TÜBİTAK UME on September 17, 2018, it was decided to carry out a joint project to develop an optical atomic clock in Turkey.

Optical atomic clocks, the latest technology in time measurement, can have 10 to 100 times higher stability than the best microwave atomic clocks. The Sr-lattice clock, which will be developed in collaboration with TÜBİTAK UME and VNIIFTRI, is planned to measure with a deviation of less than 1 second in 1 billion years.

With the optical atomic clock to be developed, it is aimed to increase the accuracy of our country's current time scale more than 100 times, paving the way for new defense industry applications, geodesy and basic science research.

In 2018, the agreement will be signed and the project will start in 2019.