Hannover 2003 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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A: Atomphysik
A 11: Postersitzung 1
A 11.15: Poster
Dienstag, 25. März 2003, 16:00–18:30, Poster
Relativistic time dilation - A new limit for deviations from Special Relativity — •Guido Saathoff1, Sergej Karpuk2, Udo Eisenbarth1, Gerhard Huber2, Sven Krohn1, Raquel Muñoz-Horta1, Sascha Reinhardt1, Dirk Schwalm1, Matthias Weidemüller1, Andreas Wolf1, and Gerald Gwinner1 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany — 2Institut für Physik, Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany
The frequency measurement of Doppler-shifted optical lines of ions circulating in a storage ring at high speed permits a sensitive test of the relativistic Doppler-formula and, hence, the time dilation factor γ SR of Special Relativity. The resonance frequency of such a line is measured for the light travelling parallel and antiparallel with respect to the ion beam. Special Relativity requires the product of those two frequencies be equal to the square of the ions’ rest-frame frequency. A deviation from this relation would indicate a breakdown of the theory. Previous measurements at the storage ring TSR in Heidelberg on a Λ-type three-level system in 7Li+ at v=0.065 c gave a new, improved limit, but were hampered by a large broadening of the linewidth. Recently, we have identified this broadening of the Λ-resonance to be caused by velocity changing processes in the storage ring. Saturation spectroscopy on a two-level system in 7Li+ has proven to be largely immune against these effects and has, together with an improved control of several systematic error sources, led to a further improved upper limit for deviations from time dilation, making the storage ring measurement one order of magnitude more accurate than other experiments.