Do Atoms Age?

Understand

Time evolution generically entangles a quantum state with environmental degrees of freedom.

• The resulting increase in entropy changes the properties of that quantum system leading to "aging".
• It is interesting to ask if this familiar property also applies to simple, single particle quantum systems such as the decay of a radioactive particle.
• We propose a test of such aging in an ion clock setup where we probe for temporal changes to the energies of the electronic state of an ion containing a radioactive nucleus.