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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 4: Highly Charged Ions and their Applications I

A 4.2: Vortrag

Montag, 2. März 2026, 12:00–12:15, N 25

Nuclear Excitation by Electron Capture - Towards a Direct and Unambiguous Detection — •Esther B. Menz for the NEEC-at-GSI collaboration — University of Cologne — GSI, Darmstadt

Nuclear excitation by electron capture (NEEC) is a fundamental process that provides a direct interaction between the nucleus and the atomic shell. It is the time-inverse of the well-understood process of internal conversion (IC): an electron is resonantly captured into an atomic bound state and the nucleus is simultaneously excited by the energy made available by the capture. The process is thought to be relevant for plasma and astrophysics and might have useful applications such as producing desirable nuclear isomeric states. Despite significant efforts, no uncontroversial experimental observation of NEEC has yet been reported. A claimed observation by Chiara et al. [1] deviated from theoretical predictions by nine orders of magnitude [2] and could not be independently confirmed in an experiment by Guo et al. [3]. Motivated by successful measurements of dielectronic recombination processes in ion storage rings, we plan to search for NEEC at the ESR storage ring of GSI. Using the ESR electron cooler as a free-electron target provides the distinct advantage of avoiding effects introduced by the solid target in the aforementioned single-pass experiment.

We will present the current status of experiment preparation along with estimations of the expected count and background rates.

[1] C. J. Chiara et al., Nature 554, 216 (2018)

[2] Y. Wu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 212501 (2019)

[3] S. Guo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 242502 (2022)

Keywords: nuclear physics; atomic physics; storage rings; interaction between nucleus and atomic shell