News of the Year

Aer years of research at the major metrology institutes, the international community has agreed on the revision of the International System of Units (SI) – this revision came into force on 20 May 2019, which was World Metrology Day.

In addition to the revision of the International System of Units (SI), the supporting documents (mises en pratique) for the practical realization of the SI units were also adapted to the revision of the SI and were published on 20 May 2019 as well.

Based on a European research project, PTB has developed a Digital Calibration Certicate (DCC ) which fulfills all international requirements made on such a document. This was the first step towards a conversion from conventional paper-based calibration certificates to machine-readable documents.

To date, data that can be life-saving in an accident has been saved separately in different places. A project initially planned for three years and funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Research and the Volkswagen Foundation with a budget of 1.2 million euros intends to change this. Within the framework of this project, TU Braunschweig, MHH (Hannover Medical School) and PTB will unite to form the...

Wind turbines must undergo a lengthy approval process before being constructed; this process includes examining whether they may be a disturbance to terrestrial navigation systems in aviation. A modified prognosis tool now allows the interaction between wind turbines and Doppler VHF omnidirectional radio ranges (DVORs) to be measured with significantly greater accuracy. It has become clear that...

Under the auspices of PTB, twelve European metrology institutes have begun establishing a coordinated and service-oriented European infrastructure for metrology in the field of laboratory medicine: Under EURAMET’s responsibility, they founded the European Metrology Network “Traceability in Laboratory Medicine”¹.

A festive ceremony in Tokyo on 8 April marked the launch of research collaboration which will be dedicated to fundamental questions in physics. The partners are the Japanese research institute RIKEN, two Max Planck Institutes, and PTB. The three partners are financing the center, which is planned for a runtime of five years, equally with a total of approximately 7.5 million euros.

Because photovoltaics (PV) is a key element of Germany’s future energy supply, PTB has applied for funds for the construction of a competence center for PV metrology within the scope of the German Federal Government’s 7^th Energy Research Programme. Approval of 3.5 million euros has enabled PTB to establish a unique infrastructure of laboratory and field calibration procedures with the lowest...

Some of the currently most accurate optical clocks are based on trapped ions since they allow excellent control over systematic frequency shifts. To benefit from further reductions in the frequency uncertainty in practice, the averaging times of the next generation of trapped-ion clocks will, however, also have to be reduced. Researchers at the QUEST Institute of PTB have succeeded in...

Quantum sensors can reach sensitivity levels that are impossible to reach according to the laws of classical physics we know from our everyday lives. Such sensitivity levels can only be reached if we delve into the world of quantum mechanics with all of its fascinating characteristics. One such characteristic is the phenomenon of superposition, which states that objects can be in two places at...