Mainz 2026 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 13: Nuclear Clocks
Q 13.8: Talk
Monday, March 2, 2026, 18:45–19:00, P 11
Towards nuclear laser excitation of 229Th ions — •Vishal Lal, S. Sagar Maurya, Gregor Zitzer, Niels Irwin, Johannes Tiedau, Maksim V. Okhapkin, and Ekkehard Peik — Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig
The recently demonstrated laser excitation of low-energy nuclear transition in 229Th using table-top laser systems, has opened prospects for a new generation of optical clocks based on a nuclear transition. Since the nucleus itself is much smaller, much less polarizable and very well shielded by the electrons around, the effect of external electric fields and field gradients are expected to be significantly smaller compared to electronic transition used in most of the state-of-the-art optical atomic clocks (trapped ions and optical lattice clocks). The laser excitation of the nucleus can be detected efficiently in a double-resonance method by probing the hyperfine structure of a transition in the electron shell.
We here report our experimental setup and advances in laser excitation of the 229Th nucleus and relevant hyperfine structure suitable for nuclear spectroscopy in buffer gas cooled of 229Th1+, 229Th2+, and sympathetically laser cooled 229Th3+ ions.
Keywords: Nuclear clock; Hyperfine spectroscopy; Thorium 229; Laser cooling