Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Authors

  • Hendrik Bekker
  • Anastasia Borschevsky
  • Zoltán Harman
  • Christoph H. Keitel
  • Thomas Pfeifer
  • Piet Oliver Schmidt
  • José R. Crespo López-Urrutia
  • Julian C. Berengut

External Research Organisations

  • Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics
  • University of Groningen
  • Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt PTB
  • University of New South Wales (UNSW)
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Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number5651
JournalNature Communications
Volume10
Issue number1
Early online date11 Dec 2019
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 11 Dec 2019

Abstract

Recent theoretical works have proposed atomic clocks based on narrow optical transitions in highly charged ions. The most interesting candidates for searches of physics beyond the Standard Model are those which occur at rare orbital crossings where the shell structure of the periodic table is reordered. There are only three such crossings expected to be accessible in highly charged ions, and hitherto none have been observed as both experiment and theory have proven difficult. In this work we observe an orbital crossing in a system chosen to be tractable from both sides: Pr9 +. We present electron beam ion trap measurements of its spectra, including the inter-configuration lines that reveal the sought-after crossing. With state-of-the-art calculations we show that the proposed nHz-wide clock line has a very high sensitivity to variation of the fine-structure constant, α, and violation of local Lorentz invariance; and has extremely low sensitivity to external perturbations.

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Cite this

Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+. / Bekker, Hendrik; Borschevsky, Anastasia; Harman, Zoltán et al.
In: Nature Communications, Vol. 10, No. 1, 5651, 11.12.2019.

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Bekker, H, Borschevsky, A, Harman, Z, Keitel, CH, Pfeifer, T, Schmidt, PO, Crespo López-Urrutia, JR & Berengut, JC 2019, 'Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+', Nature Communications, vol. 10, no. 1, 5651. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1910.09010, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13406-9
Bekker, H., Borschevsky, A., Harman, Z., Keitel, C. H., Pfeifer, T., Schmidt, P. O., Crespo López-Urrutia, J. R., & Berengut, J. C. (2019). Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+. Nature Communications, 10(1), Article 5651. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1910.09010, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13406-9
Bekker H, Borschevsky A, Harman Z, Keitel CH, Pfeifer T, Schmidt PO et al. Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+. Nature Communications. 2019 Dec 11;10(1):5651. Epub 2019 Dec 11. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.1910.09010, 10.1038/s41467-019-13406-9
Bekker, Hendrik ; Borschevsky, Anastasia ; Harman, Zoltán et al. / Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+. In: Nature Communications. 2019 ; Vol. 10, No. 1.
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