Conveners
Atomic Techniques for Fundamental Physics
- W. Nörtershäuser (TU Darmstadt)
Among the most important quantities for fundamental physics is the effective mass of the electron neutrino $m_{\nu}$, which has far-ranging consequences for cosmology and theories beyond the Standard Model. At present, the most precise indirect upper limit on $m_{\nu}$ is <120 meV/$c^2$ resulting from astrophysical observations while the most precise direct limit is set by the KATRIN...
In the study of atomic nuclei, nuclear charge radii provide intriguing physics insights into the evolution of nuclear structure far away from stability and pairing effects [1, 2]. Furthermore, charge radii have been used as experimental input for the determination of $V_{ud}$ of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix from superallowed nuclear β-decays [3]. In the Standard...
More than a decade ago, radium monofluoride (RaF) was proposed as a highly promising system for the search of new physics with ultra-high-precision laser spectroscopy [1]. In addition to its predicted sensitivity to the electric dipole moment of the electron and nuclear P,T-odd effects [2], the molecular structure of RaF was also predicted to be laser-coolable [1,3], promising an improvement...
The electron affinity (EA) of a chemical element is defined as the energy released as an electron is attached to a neutral atom. The binding of such an “extra” electron does not arise from the net charge of the atomic system but is a result of complex electron-electron correlations. Hence, precise measurements of EAs are powerful benchmarks of atomic theories reliant on many-body quantum...
