Physicists from Austria and Germany were the first to record the excitation of a nuclear transition in the thorium-229 isotope. This transition was caused by the absorption of laser radiation, rather than the traditional method based on subsequent nuclear luminescence.
A low-power continuous laser operating at a wavelength of 148 nanometers and having a power in the tens of picowatts was used to implement this experiment. The methodology developed by the scientists opens prospects for nuclear clocks to compete with atomic clocks in the future.
The research results were officially presented in the scientific journal Nature.