Feasibility Study of Internal Conversion Electron Spectroscopy of ${}^{229m}$Th

Abstract

With an expected energy of 7.8(5) eV, the isomeric first excited state in ${}^{229}$Th exhibits the lowest excitation energy of all known nuclei. Until today, a value for the excitation energy has been inferred only by indirect measurements. In this paper, we propose to use the internal conversion decay channel as a probe for the ground-state transition energy. MatLab-based Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to obtain an estimate of the expected statistics and to test the feasibility of the experiment. From the simulations we conclude, that with the presented methods an energy determination with a precision of better than 0.1 eV is possible.

8 Pages, 5 Figures

References in corpus (6)

• Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition
• Lifetime measurement of the ${}^{229}$Th nuclear isomer
• Excitation of the isomeric ^{229m}Th nuclear state via an electronic bridge process in ^{229}Th^+
• Determination of the extraction efficiency for ${}^{233}$U source $\alpha$-recoil ions from the MLL buffer-gas stopping cell
• Measuring the Th-229 nuclear isomer transition with U-233 doped crystals
• A VUV detection system for the direct photonic identification of the first excited isomeric state of ${}^{229}$Th

Cited by in corpus (6)

• A laser excitation scheme for ${}^{229\text{m}}$Th
• The ${}^{229}$Th isomer: prospects for a nuclear optical clock
• On an attempt to optically excite the nuclear isomer in Th-229
• Towards a 229Th-based nuclear clock
• The concept of laser-based conversion electron Mössbauer spectroscopy for a precise energy determination of ${}^{229m}$Th
• Towards an energy measurement of the internal conversion electron in the de-excitation of the Th-229 isomer