English

Ionization potential of radium monofluoride

Atomic Physics 2026-01-15 v3 Nuclear Experiment Chemical Physics Computational Physics

Abstract

The ionization potential (IP) of radium monofluoride (RaF) was measured to be 4.969(2)[10] eV, revealing a relativistic enhancement in the series of alkaline earth monofluorides. The results are in agreement with a relativistic coupled-cluster prediction of 4.969[7] eV, incorporating up to quantum electrodynamics corrections. Using the same computational methodology, an improved calculation for the dissociation energy (D0D_{0}) of 5.54[5] eV is presented. This confirms that radium monofluoride joins the small group of diatomic molecules for which D0>IPD_{0}>\mathrm{IP}, paving the way for precision control and interrogation of its Rydberg states.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.14673,
  title  = {Ionization potential of radium monofluoride},
  author = {S. G. Wilkins and H. A. Perrett and S. M. Udrescu and A. A. Kyuberis and L. F. Pašteka and M. Au and I. Belošević and R. Berger and C. L. Binnersley and M. L. Bissell and A. Borschevsky and A. A. Breier and A. J. Brinson and K. Chrysalidis and T. E. Cocolios and B. S. Cooper and R. P. de Groote and A. Dorne and E. Eliav and R. W. Field and K. T. Flanagan and S. Franchoo and R. F. Garcia Ruiz and K. Gaul and S. Geldhof and T. F. Giesen and F. P. Gustafsson and D. Hanstorp and R. Heinke and Á. Koszorús and S. Kujanpää and L. Lalanne and G. Neyens and M. Nichols and J. R. Reilly and C. M. Ricketts and S. Rothe and A. Sunaga and B. van den Borne and A. R. Vernon and Q. Wang and J. Wessolek and F. Wienholtz and X. F. Yang and Y. Zhou and C. Zülch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.14673},
  year   = {2026}
}