Recent progress in laser spectroscopy of the actinides

Abstract

The interest to perform laser spectroscopy in the heaviest elements arises from the strong impact of relativistic effects, electron correlations and quantum electrodynamics on their atomic structure. Once this atomic structure is well understood, laser spectroscopy also provides access to nuclear properties such as spins, mean square charge radii and electromagnetic moments in a nuclear-model independent way. This is of particular interest for the heaviest actinides around $N=152$, a region of shell stabilized deformed nuclei. The experimental progress of laser spectroscopy in this region benefitted from continuous methodological and technical developments such as the introduction of buffer-gas-stopping techniques that enabled the access to ever more exotic nuclei far-off stability. The key challenges faced in this endeavor are small yields, nuclides with rather short half-lives and the need to search for atomic transitions in a wide spectral range guided by theoretical predictions. This paper describes the basics of the most common experimental methods and discusses selected recent results on the atomic and nuclear properties of the actinides up to nobelium where pioneering experiments were performed at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.

arXiv commenthttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0146641020300818

References in corpus (53)

• Accurate nuclear radii and binding energies from a chiral interaction
• Unexpectedly large charge radii of neutron-rich calcium isotopes
• Nuclear isotope shifts within the local energy-density functional approach
• Nuclear Charge Radius of Li-9, Li-11: Halo Neutron: the influence of Halo Neutrons
• Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition
• Enhanced effect of temporal variation of the fine structure constant in diatomic molecules
• Energy of the ${}^{229}$Th nuclear clock transition
• Development of a configuration-interaction + all-order method for atomic calculations
• Laser spectroscopic characterization of the nuclear clock isomer ${}^{229m}$Th
• Direct mapping of nuclear shell effects in the heaviest elements
• Wigner Crystals of 229Th for Optical Excitation of the Nuclear Isomer
• Shell Model Description of Isotope Shifts in Calcium
• Towards the global description of nuclear charge radii: exploring the Fayans energy density functional
• Lifetime measurement of the ${}^{229}$Th nuclear isomer
• Excitation of the isomeric ^{229m}Th nuclear state via an electronic bridge process in ^{229}Th^+
• Nuclear clocks based on resonant excitation of gamma-transitions
• X-ray pumping of the Th-229 nuclear clock isomer
• A proton density bubble in the doubly magic ${}^{34}$Si nucleus
• Isotope shift, non-linearity of King plots and the search for new particles
• Electron and Nucleon Localization Functions of Oganesson: Approaching the Thomas-Fermi Limit
• QED and relativistic corrections in superheavy elements
• The in-gas-jet laser ion source: resonance ionization spectroscopy of radioactive atoms in supersonic gas jets
• Ab initio calculation of the potential bubble nucleus ${}^{34}$Si
• Magnetic dipole moment of 57,59Cu measured by in-gas-cell laser spectroscopy
• Combining configuration interaction with perturbation theory for atoms with large number of valence electrons
• The Spectrum of Thorium from 250 nm to 5500 nm: Ritz Wavelengths and Optimized Energy Levels
• First experimental determination of the charge radius of ${}^{74}$Rb and its application in tests of the unitarity of the CKM matrix
• Resonance ionization spectroscopy of thorium isotopes - towards a laser spectroscopic identification of the low-lying 7.6 eV isomer of Th-229
• Determination of the extraction efficiency for ${}^{233}$U source $\alpha$-recoil ions from the MLL buffer-gas stopping cell
• In-gas-cell laser spectroscopy for magnetic dipole moment of ${}^{199}$Pt toward $N=$ 126
• An alternative approach to populate and study the ${}^{229}$Th nuclear clock isomer
• High-precision ab initio calculations of the spectrum of Lr${}^{+}$
• High-Resolution Laser Spectroscopy of Long-Lived Plutonium Isotopes
• Saturated configuration interaction calculations for five-valent Ta and Db
• Internal conversion from excited electronic states of ${}^{229}\mathrm{T}h$ ions
• Nobelium energy levels and hyperfine structure constants
• Laser Resonance Chromatography of Superheavy Elements
• Electron structure of superheavy elements Uut, Fl and Uup ($Z$=113 to 115)
• Calculation of atomic spectra and transition amplitudes for superheavy element Db (Z=105)
• Discovery of Isotopes of the Transuranium Elements with 93 <= Z <= 98
• Discovery of Scandium, Titanium, Mercury, and Einsteinium Isotopes
• Theoretical calculation of atomic properties of superheavy elements Z=110-112 and their ions
• Theoretical study of electron structure of superheavy elements with an open $6d$-shell, Sg, Bh, Hs and Mt
• Sensitivity of isotope shift to distribution of nuclear charge density
• All-order calculations of the spectra of superheavy elements E113 and E114
• Prediction of quantum many-body chaos in protactinium atom
• Theoretical study of electronic structure of erbium and fermium
• Exploiting transport properties for the detection of optical pumping in heavy ions
• Development of a low-energy radioactive ion beam facility for the MARA separator
• Mobility of the Singly-Charged Lanthanide and Actinide Cations: Trends and Perspectives
• The extraction of 229Th3+ from a buffer-gas stopping cell
• Fast configuration-interaction calculations for nobelium and ytterbium
• Calculations of the atomic structure for the low-lying states of actinium

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Laser Spectroscopy for the Study of Exotic Nuclei
• Advances in actinide thin films: synthesis, properties, and future directions
• Ab initio calculations of the spectrum of lawrencium
• Pinning down electron correlations in RaF via spectroscopy of excited states and high-accuracy relativistic quantum chemistry
• Electronic structure of Rf^+ (Z = 104) from ab initio calculations
• Relativistic atomic structure calculations in support of spectroscopy
• Production of neptunium and plutonium nuclides from uranium carbide using 1.4-GeV protons
• $\text{Ab initio}$ multiconfigurational calculations of experimentally significant energy levels and transition rates in Lr I $\left(Z=103\right)$
• Laser Resonance Chromatography of ${}^{229}$Th${}^{3+}$ in He: an ab initio investigation
• Ab initio calculations of the electronic structure of Ac${}^{+}$