Fine-structure constant sensitivity of the Th-229 nuclear clock transition

Abstract

State-resolved laser spectroscopy at the 10${}^{-12}$ precision level recently reported in $arXiv$:2406.18719 determined the fractional change in nuclear quadrupole moment between the ground and isomeric state of ${}^{229}\mathrm{Th}$, $\hat{I}”Q_0/Q_0$=1.791(2) %. Assuming a prolate spheroid nucleus, this allows to quantify the sensitivity of the nuclear transition frequency to variations of the fine-structure constant $\hat{I}\pm$ to $K=5900(2300)$, with the uncertainty dominated by the experimentally measured charge radius difference $\hat{I}”⟨r^2⟩$ between the ground and isomeric state. This result indicates a three orders of magnitude enhancement over atomic clock schemes based on electron shell transitions. We find that $\hat{I}”Q_0$ is highly sensitive to tiny changes in the nuclear volume, thus the constant volume approximation cannot be used to accurately relate changes in $⟨r^2⟩$ and $Q_0$. The difference between the experimental and estimated values in $\hat{I}”Q_0/Q_0$ raises a further question on the octupole contribution to the alpha-sensitivity.

10 pages, 2 figures