Garchinger Maier-Leibnitz-Kolloquium: Sensitivity of highly charged ions to hypothetical fifth forces and QED effects

by Prof. José R. Crespo López-Urrutia (Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg)

Thursday 1 Feb 2024, 16:15 → 17:15 Europe/Berlin

Lecture Hall, ground floor (west) (LMU building, Am Coulombwall 1, campus Garching)

Atomic probes of fundamental interactions based on precision spectroscopy have been essential for the development of quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, quantum electrodynamics, and investigations of the non-conservation of parity and the existence of an electric dipole moment of the electron. Modern techniques that allow the preparation of highly charged ions (HCIs) with a defined number of bound electrons greatly extend the periodic table in the charge dimension and make available a variety of species for spectroscopic studies covering the electromagnetic spectrum from the optical to the X-ray region, broadening the range of fundamental physics studies [1]. Recent proposals to search for the presence of the fifth force in the form of Yukawa particles using a combination of frequency metrology and King-plot methods will benefit from these properties, since HCI offer many more electromagnetic transitions with interesting properties than the usual spectroscopic species studied in laboratories. Our spectroscopic studies of Ca and Xe HCI [2,3] explore these possibilities. In addition, continuous im-provements to existing experiments have allowed more rigorous tests of atomic structure theory [4] and bound-state QED [5]. I will report on related recent experiments carried out at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik in Heidelberg.

[1] M. G. Kozlov et al., Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 045005 (2018)
[2] N. Rehbehn et al., Phys. Rev. A 103, L040801 (2021)  
[3] N. Rehbehn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 161803 (2023)
[4] S. Kuehn et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 245001 (2022)
[5] J. Morgner et al., Nature 622, 53 (2023)

Hybrid access via ZOOM:
https://lmu-munich.zoom.us/j/98457332925?pwd=TWc3V1JkSHpyOTBPQVlMelhuNnZ1dz09
Meeting ID: 984 5733 2925
Passcode: 979953

kolloquium-01-02-24.pdf