Mass-difference measurements on heavy nuclides with at an eV/c2 accuracy level with PENTATRAP

Abstract

First ever measurements of the ratios of free cyclotron frequencies of heavy highly charged ions with Z>50 with relative uncertainties close to 1e-11 are presented. Such accurate measurements have become realistic due to the construction of the novel cryogenic multi-Penning-trap mass spectrometer PENTATRAP. Based on the measured frequency ratios, the mass differences of five pairs of stable xenon isotopes, ranging from 126Xe to 134Xe, have been determined. Moreover, the first direct measurement of an electron binding energy in a heavy highly charged ion, namely of the 37th atomic electron in xenon, with an uncertainty of a few eV is demonstrated. The obtained value agrees with the calculated one using two independent different implementations of the multiconfiguration Dirac-Hartree-Fock method. PENTATRAP opens the door to future measurements of electron binding energies in highly charged heavy ions for more stringent tests of bound-state quantum electrodynamics in strong electromagnetic fields and for an investigation of the manifestation of Light Dark Matter in isotopic chains of certain chemical elements.

arXiv comment2 figures, 1 table, 28 references

References in corpus (7)

• Highly charged ions: optical clocks and applications in fundamental physics
• Direct Measurement of the Mass Difference of Ho163 and Dy163 Solves the Q-Value Puzzle for the Neutrino Mass Determination
• Isotope shift, non-linearity of King plots and the search for new particles
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• Precision measurement of atomic isotope shifts using a two-isotope entangled state
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• The trap design of PENTATRAP

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• Multiple-ionization energy difference of 163Ho and 163Dy atoms
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• Calculations of the binding-energy differences for highly-charged Ho and Dy ions