English

The nuclear charge radius of $^{13}\mathrm{C}$

Atomic Physics 2025-07-09 v1 Nuclear Theory

Abstract

The size is a key property of a nucleus. Accurate nuclear radii are extracted from elastic electron scattering, laser spectroscopy, and muonic atom spectroscopy. The results are not always compatible, as the proton-radius puzzle has shown most dramatically. Beyond helium, precision data from muonic and electronic sources are scarce in the light-mass region. The stable isotopes of carbon are an exception. We present a laser spectroscopic measurement of the root-mean-square (rms) charge radius of 13C^{13}\mathrm{C} and compare this with ab initio nuclear structure calculations. Measuring all hyperfine components of the 23S23P2\,^3\mathrm{S} \rightarrow 2\,^3\mathrm{P} fine-structure triplet in 13C4+^{13}\mathrm{C}^{4+} ions referenced to a frequency comb allows us to determine its center-of-gravity with accuracy better than 2MHz2\,\mathrm{MHz} although second-order hyperfine-structure effects shift individual lines by several GHz\mathrm{GHz}. We improved the uncertainty of Rc(13C)R_\mathrm{c}(^{13}\mathrm{C}) determined with electrons by a factor of 66 and found a 3σ3\sigma discrepancy with the muonic atom result of similar accuracy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.05680,
  title  = {The nuclear charge radius of $^{13}\mathrm{C}$},
  author = {Patrick Müller and Matthias Heinz and Phillip Imgram and Kristian König and Bernhard Maass and Takayuki Miyagi and Wilfried Nörtershäuser and Robert Roth and Achim Schwenk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.05680},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Published in Nature Communications, 14 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:50:49.687Z