English

Precise measurement of positronium hyperfine splitting using the Zeeman effect

Atomic Physics 2015-05-28 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

Positronium is an ideal system for the research of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) in bound state. The hyperfine splitting (HFS) of positronium, ΔHFS\Delta_{\mathrm{HFS}}, gives a good test of the bound state calculations and probes new physics beyond the Standard Model. A new method of QED calculations has revealed the discrepancy by 15\,ppm (3.9σ\sigma) of ΔHFS\Delta_{\mathrm{HFS}} between the QED prediction and the experimental average. There would be possibility of new physics or common systematic uncertainties in the previous all experiments. We describe a new experiment to reduce possible systematic uncertainties and will provide an independent check of the discrepancy. We are now taking data and the current result of ΔHFS=203.3951±0.0024(stat.,12ppm)±0.0019(sys.,9.5ppm)GHz\Delta_{\mathrm{HFS}} = 203.395\,1 \pm 0.002\,4 (\mathrm{stat.}, 12\,\mathrm{ppm}) \pm 0.001\,9 (\mathrm{sys.}, 9.5\,\mathrm{ppm})\,\mathrm{GHz} has been obtained so far. A measurement with a precision of OO(ppm) is expected within a year.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1105.4392,
  title  = {Precise measurement of positronium hyperfine splitting using the Zeeman effect},
  author = {A. Ishida and Y. Sasaki and G. Akimoto and T. Suehara and T. Namba and S. Asai and T. Kobayashi and H. Saito and M. Yoshida and K. Tanaka and A. Yamamoto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.4392},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, proceeding of LEAP2011, accepted by Hyperfine Interactions

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:10:53.481Z