Proposal for a Nuclear Light Source

Abstract

The paper considers a principal possibility of creating a nuclear light source of the vacuum ultra violet (VUV) range based on the ${}^{229}$Th nucleus. This nuclear light source can help to solve two main problems -- excitation of the low-lying ${}^{229m}$Th isomer and precision measurement of the nuclear isomeric transition energy. The Thorium nuclear light source is based on the nuclei implanted in a thin dielectric film with a large bandgap. While passing an electric current through the sample, the ${}^{229}$Th nuclei are excited to the low energy isomeric state $3/2^{+}(8.19\pm 0.12$ eV) in the process of inelastic scattering of conduction electrons. The subsequent spontaneous decay of ${}^{229m}$Th is followed by the emission of $\gamma$ quanta in the VUV range. The luminosity of the Thorium nuclear light source is approximately $10^5$~photons/s per 1~A of current and per 1~ng of ${}^{229}$Th. The suggested scheme to obtain $\gamma$ radiation from the ${}^{229m}$Th isomer can be considered as a kind of nuclear analogue of the optical radiation from the usual metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) junction.

8 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Direct detection of the 229Th nuclear clock transition
• Enhanced effect of temporal variation of the fine structure constant in diatomic molecules
• Proposal for a Nuclear Gamma-Ray Laser of Optical Range
• Measurement of the ${}^{229}$Th isomer energy with a magnetic micro-calorimeter
• Performance of a 229 Thorium solid-state nuclear clock
• Excitation of the isomeric ^{229m}Th nuclear state via an electronic bridge process in ^{229}Th^+
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• On Th229 and time-dependent fundamental constants
• Energy of the ${}^{229}$Th Nuclear Clock Isomer Determined by Absolute $\gamma$-ray Energy Difference
• Excitation of ${}^{229m}$Th at Inelastic Scattering of Low Energy Electrons
• Excitation of the ${}^{229}$Th nucleus via a two-photon electronic transition
• Internal conversion from excited electronic states of ${}^{229}\mathrm{T}h$ ions
• Internal conversion of the low energy ${}^{229m}$Th isomer in the Thorium anion