Atomic clocks are arguably the most accurate scientific instruments ever built. Modern clocks are astonishing timepieces guaranteed to keep time within a second over the age of the Universe. I will review the remarkable progress in atomic timekeeping and discuss a variety of applications of atomic clocks as quantum sensors. These applications range from measuring electric fields and geoids to dark matter and exotic physics searches. Massive entanglement of atomic ensembles offers an intriguing potential for improving the sensitivity even further. I will present our proposal on massive entanglement of millions of atoms with Rydberg gates.

A short bio: Andrei Derevianko is teaching quantum physics and related subjects at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). He has authored ~ 150 refereed publications in theoretical physics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, Simons fellow in theoretical physics, and a Fulbright scholar. Among a variety of research topics, he has contributed to the development of several novel classes of atomic clocks and to precision tests of fundamental symmetries with atoms and molecules. Recent interests include detection of ultralight dark matter with GPS.

Upon graduating from FizTech, he was involved with a computer startup in Moscow and then moved to the United States. He earned his Ph.D. at Auburn and did a postdoctoral work at Notre Dame and at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has been a University of Nevada-Reno faculty since 2000.