Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 5651 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 11 Dec 2019 |
| Publication status | E-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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In: Nature Communications, Vol. 10, No. 1, 5651, 11.12.2019.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Detection of the 5p – 4f orbital crossing and its optical clock transition in Pr9+
AU - Bekker, Hendrik
AU - Borschevsky, Anastasia
AU - Harman, Zoltán
AU - Keitel, Christoph H.
AU - Pfeifer, Thomas
AU - Schmidt, Piet Oliver
AU - Crespo López-Urrutia, José R.
AU - Berengut, Julian C.
N1 - Funding information: This work is part of and supported by the DFG Collaborative Research Centre SFB 1225 (ISOQUANT). J.C.B. was supported in this work by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Australian Research Council (DP190100974). A.B. would like to thank the Center for Information Technology of the University of Groningen for providing access to the Peregrine high performance computing cluster and for their technical support. A.B. is grateful for the support of the UNSW Gordon Godfrey fellowship. P.O.S. acknowledges support from DFG, project SCHM2678/5-1, through SFB 1227 (DQ-mat), project B05, and the Cluster of Excellence EXC 2123 (QuantumFrontiers). We acknowledge funding through the Max Planck-RIKEN-PTB Center for Time, Constants and Fundamental Symmetries (TCFS).
PY - 2019/12/11
Y1 - 2019/12/11
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076378780&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.48550/arXiv.1910.09010
DO - 10.48550/arXiv.1910.09010
M3 - Article
C2 - 31827086
AN - SCOPUS:85076378780
VL - 10
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
SN - 2041-1723
IS - 1
M1 - 5651
ER -