Related papers: Grand-mother clocks and quiet lasers
During the last decades active particles have attracted an incipient attention as they have been observed in a broad class of scenarios, ranging from bacterial suspension in living systems to artificial swimmers in nonequilibirum systems.…
The time delay of light as it passes by a massive object, first calculated by Shapiro in 1964, is a hallmark of the curvature of space-time. To date, all measurements of the Shapiro time delay have been made over solar-system distance…
When an oscillator switches abruptly between different frequencies, there is some ambiguity in deciding how the system should be modelled at the switch. Here we describe two seemingly natural models of a switch in a simple…
The dynamics of an unique type of clock mechanism known as grasshopper escapement is investigated with the aim of evaluating its accuracy in a noisy environment. It is demonstrated that the clock's precision scales linearly with the rate of…
We derive the predicted time dilation of delocalized atomic clocks in an optical lattice setup in the presence of a gravitational field to leading order in quantum relativistic corrections. We investigate exotic quantum states of motion…
The dynamics of driven, damped pendulum as used in mechanical clocks is numerically investigated. In addition to the analysis of a well-known mechanisms such as chronometer escapement, the unusual properties of Harrison's grasshopper…
General Relativity (GR) is shown to be a complete theory with respect to the isochrony of the pendulum. This guarantees that time can be measured with a mechanical clock within the theory itself as a matter of principle. The proper and…
In general relativity, the picture of spacetime assigns an ideal clock to each worldline. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of…
Spontaneous synchronization between coupled periodic systems occur in a wealth of classical physical setups. Here, we show theoretically that the phase of two distinct quantum harmonic oscillators spontaneously when they are strongly…
The humble pendulum is often invoked as the archetype of a simple, gravity driven, oscillator. Under ideal circumstances, the oscillation frequency of the pendulum is independent of its mass and swing amplitude. However, in most real-world…
Simple models of clarinet instruments based on iterated maps have been used in the past to successfully estimate the threshold of oscillation of this instrument as a function of a constant blowing pressure. However, when the blowing…
A model for harmonic oscillator damping due to the internal friction of solids has been developed, based on considerations of a long period pendulum. The assumption of a complex elastic modulus to describe stress-strain hysteresis in the…
The wave nature of light is revealed by diffraction from physical structures. We report a time-domain version of the classic Young's double-slit experiment: a beam of light twice gated in time produces an interference in the frequency…
The FFT power spectrum of time deflection data from a pendulum bob shows a broad structure in the micro-Hz regime is consistent with non-resonant response due to forced acceleration. Harmonic analyses of pass Butterworth filtered data and…
The circadian clocks keeping time of day in many living organisms rely on self-sustained biochemical oscillations which can be entrained by external cues, such as light, to the 24-hour cycle induced by Earth rotation. However, environmental…
The origin of friction force is a very old problem in physics, which goes back to Leonardo da Vinci or even older times. Extremely important from a practical point of view, but with no satisfactory explanation yet. Many models have been…
The Long Now Foundation is building a mechanical clock that is designed to keep time for the next 10,000 years. The clock maintains its long-term accuracy by synchronizing to the Sun. The 10,000-Year Clock keeps track of five different…
We consider a quantum mechanical system to model the effect of quantum fields on the evolution of the early universe. The system consists of an inverted oscillator bilinearly coupled to a set of harmonic oscillators. We point out that the…
We theoretically analyse an autonomous clock comprising a nanoelectromechanical system, which undergoes self-oscillations driven by electron tunnelling. The periodic mechanical motion behaves as the clockwork, similar to the swinging of a…
We consider the interaction of an harmonic oscillator with the quantum field via radiation pressure. We show that a `Schrodinger cat' state decoheres in a time scale that depends on the degree of `classicality' of the state components, and…