A laser excitation scheme for $^{229\text{m}}$Th
Abstract
Direct laser excitation of the lowest known nuclear excited state in Th has been a longstanding objective. It is generally assumed that reaching this goal would require a considerably reduced uncertainty of the isomer's excitation energy compared to the presently adopted value of eV. Here we present a direct laser excitation scheme for Th, which circumvents this requirement. The proposed excitation scheme makes use of already existing laser technology and therefore paves the way for nuclear laser spectroscopy. In this concept, the recently experimentally observed internal-conversion decay channel of the isomeric state is used for probing the isomeric population. A signal-to-background ratio of better than and a total measurement time of less than three days for laser scanning appear to be achievable.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1709.05524,
title = {A laser excitation scheme for $^{229\text{m}}$Th},
author = {Lars von der Wense and Benedict Seiferle and Simon Stellmer and Johannes Weitenberg and Georgy Kazakov and Adriana Pálffy and Peter G. Thirolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.05524},
year = {2017}
}