Laser Probing of Neutron-Rich Nuclei in Light Atoms

Abstract

The neutron-rich 6He and 8He isotopes exhibit an exotic nuclear structure that consists of a tightly bound 4He-like core with additional neutrons orbiting at a relatively large distance, forming a halo. Recent experimental efforts have succeeded in laser trapping and cooling these short-lived, rare helium atoms, and have measured the atomic isotope shifts along the 4He-6He-8He chain by performing laser spectroscopy on individual trapped atoms. Meanwhile, the few-electron atomic structure theory, including relativistic and QED corrections, has reached a comparable degree of accuracy in the calculation of the isotope shifts. In parallel efforts, also by measuring atomic isotope shifts, the nuclear charge radii of lithium and beryllium isotopes have been studied. The techniques employed were resonance ionization spectroscopy on neutral, thermal lithium atoms and collinear laser spectroscopy on beryllium ions. Combining advances in both atomic theory and laser spectroscopy, the charge radii of these light halo nuclei have now been determined for the first time independent of nuclear structure models. The results are compared with the values predicted by a number of nuclear structure calculations, and are used to guide our understanding of the nuclear forces in the extremely neutron-rich environment.

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Cited by in corpus (48)

• Quantum Monte Carlo methods for nuclear physics
• Laser Spectroscopy for the Study of Exotic Nuclei
• Few-nucleon systems with state-of-the-art chiral nucleon-nucleon forces
• Towards an ab initio covariant density functional for nuclear structure
• Light nuclei with semilocal momentum-space regularized chiral interactions up to third order
• Few- and many-nucleon systems with semilocal coordinate-space regularized chiral two- and three-body forces
• Uncertainty Estimates for Theoretical Atomic and Molecular Data
• Fully self-consistent relativistic Brueckner-Hartree-Fock theory for finite nuclei
• Complete ${\alpha }^{7}m$ Lamb shift of helium triplet states
• Halo structure of ${}^8$B determined from intermediate energy proton elastic scattering in inverse kinematics
• Ab initio Folding Potentials for Nucleon-Nucleus Scattering based on NCSM One-Body Densities
• Theory of the Lamb shift and Fine Structure in muonic ${}^4\mathrm{He}$ ions and the muonic ${}^3\mathrm{He}{-}^4\mathrm{He}$ Isotope Shift
• Nuclear Charge Radii of ${}^{10,11}$B
• Higher-order recoil corrections for singlet states of the helium atom
• Halo nuclei 6He and 8He with the Coulomb-Sturmian basis
• Nuclear-matter distribution in the proton-rich nuclei ${}^7$Be and ${}^8$B from intermediate energy proton elastic scattering in inverse kinematics
• Quantum electrodynamics corrections to the $2P$ fine splitting in Li
• Emergence of simple patterns in many-body systems: from macroscopic objects to the atomic nucleus
• Precision calculation of hyperfine structure and the Zemach radii of ${}^{6,7}$Li${}^{+}$ ions
• Frequency-comb based collinear laser spectroscopy of Be for nuclear structure investigations and many-body QED tests
• Isotope shifts in ${}^{20,22}$Ne -- Precision measurements and global analysis in the framework of intermediate coupling
• Experiments towards resolving the proton charge radius puzzle
• Nuclear three-body problem in the complex energy plane: Complex-Scaling-Slater method
• Constraining equation of state of nuclear matter by charge-changing cross section measurements of mirror nuclei
• Search for three-nucleon short-range correlations in light nuclei
• Natural orbital description of the halo nucleus 6He
• Robust ab initio prediction of nuclear electric quadrupole observables by scaling to the charge radius
• Nuclear charge radii of Na isotopes: A tale of two theories
• Indirect methods in nuclear astrophysics with relativistic radioactive beams
• Natural orbitals for the ab initio no-core configuration interaction approach
• Revised ${}^3$He nuclear charge radius due to electronic hyperfine mixing
• Characterization of a metastable neon beam extracted from a commercial RF ion source
• Collinear Laser Spectroscopy of $2{}^3{S}_1\to 2{}^3{P}_J$ transitions in helium-like ${}^{12}{\mathrm{C}}^{4+}$
• BBR-induced Stark shifts and level broadening in helium atom
• Short-range correlations and their implications for isospin-dependent modification of nuclear quark distributions
• Energy-dependent existence of soliton in the synthesis of chemical elements
• The nuclear charge radius of ${}^{13}\mathrm{C}$
• Many-body effects in (p,pN) reactions within a unified approach
• Electromagnetic moments of the bound system of charged particles
• Two-dimensional extrapolation procedure for ab initio study of nuclear size parameters and the properties of halo nucleus 6He
• Finite-Size Effects in Heavy Halo Nuclei from Effective Field Theory
• Exploring nuclear structure with multiparticle azimuthal correlations at the LHC
• Robust ab initio predictions for dimensionless ratios of E2 and radius observables. I. Electric quadrupole moments and deformation
• Robust ab initio predictions for dimensionless ratios of E2 and radius observables. II. Estimation of E2 transition strengths by calibration to the charge radius
• Taking into Account the Centre-of-Mass Correlations in the Cross Sections for Elastic Scattering of Intermediate Energy Protons on the Exotic Nuclei ${}^6$He and ${}^8$He
• Halo structure of ${}^6$He from $\text{ab initio}$ two-nucleon spatial correlations
• Splitting Isotope Shift in the $1s2p{}^3{P}_{0,1,2}$ Fine-Structure Triplet in ${}^{12,13,14}$C${}^{4+}$: Experiment and Theory
• Quantum science with arrays of metastable helium-3 atoms