Bonn 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 52: Nuclear Clocks
Q 52.6: Hauptvortrag
Donnerstag, 13. März 2025, 12:30–13:00, HS Botanik
Making a solid-state nuclear optical clock — •Kjeld Beeks1,2, Luca Toscani de Col2, Ira Morawetz2, Rahul Singh1, Michael Bartokos2, Thomas Riebner2, Fabian Schaden2, Georgy Kazakov2, Tomas Sikorsky2, Thomas LaGrange1, Fabrizio Carbone1, and Thorsten Schumm2 — 1École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland — 2TU Wien, Vienna, Austria
The first nuclear excited state or isomer of 229Th has an extremely low energy (8.4 eV/148 nm) and long lived (1750 s) excited state. This is a platform for a future extremely precise nuclear optical clock, on the 10−17 level for Th doped in CaF2. Owing to its nuclear nature, it would be a new sensitive probe for fundamental physics. Recently, a string of successes led to nuclear spectroscopy on the 300 kHz level. The successes hinges on the development of a highly doped VUV transparent CaF2 crystal, doped with the radioactive 229Th. In this talk I will elaborate on how the crystal platform was originally developed and characterized: Crystal growth and crystal healing. More recently, an indication appeared why previous attempts of excitation in a crystal were unsuccessful: The nuclear excitation quenches through an interaction with the solid-state environment. I will further report a diverse array of new measurements and calculations characterizing the interaction and the solid-state environment of 229Th:CaF2 crystals. These measurements and calculations show we can control the interaction of the nucleus with its environment. With every characterization, and every simulation, the solid-state nuclear clock comes a step closer.
Keywords: Nuclear Clock; Thorium 229; CaF2; Spectroscopy