Narrow and Ultranarrow Transitions in Highly Charged Xe Ions as Probes of Fifth Forces

authored by

Nils-Holger Rehbehn, Michael K. Rosner, Julian C. Berengut, Piet O. Schmidt, Thomas Pfeifer, Ming Feng Gu, José R. Crespo López-Urrutia

Abstract

Optical frequency metrology in atoms and ions can probe hypothetical fifth forces between electrons and neutrons by sensing minute perturbations of the electronic wave function induced by them. A generalized King plot has been proposed to distinguish them from possible standard model effects arising from, e.g., finite nuclear size and electronic correlations. Additional isotopes and transitions are required for this approach. Xenon is an excellent candidate, with seven stable isotopes with zero nuclear spin, however it has no known visible ground-state transitions for high resolution spectroscopy. To address this, we have found and measured twelve magnetic-dipole lines in its highly charged ions and theoretically studied their sensitivity to fifth forces as well as the suppression of spurious higher-order standard model effects. Moreover, we identified at 764.8753(16) nm a E2-type ground-state transition with 500 s excited state lifetime as a potential clock candidate further enhancing our proposed scheme.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Quantum Optics

External Organisation(s)

National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB)
Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics
University of New South Wales (UNSW)
University of California at Berkeley

Type

Article

Journal

Physical review letters

Volume

131

ISSN

0031-9007

Publication date

20.10.2023

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Physics and Astronomy(all)

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.161803 (Access: Open)