München 2004 – scientific programme

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A: Atomphysik

A 15: Poster 2

A 15.24: Poster

Thursday, March 25, 2004, 14:00–16:00, Schellingstr. 3

Trapping of heavy alkaline earth elements — •Umakanth Dammalapati, Gerald Ebberink, Klaus Jungmann, and Lorenz Willmann — Kernfysisch Versneller Instituut, Zernikelaan 25, 9747 AA Groningen, The Netherlands

We are working toward a search for a permanent electric dipole moment (edm) of a fundamental particle. An edm, which violates time reversal symmetry (T) as well as the combination of charge conjugation symmetry (C) and parity (P), is an unambiguous signal for physics beyond the standard model. Some short lived radioactive elements and the techniques for trapping and cooling of atoms offer new possibilities for edm searches. At the KVI a facility for producing short lived radioactive isotopes (TRIµP) is being set up. Here, the heavy alkaline earth element radium will be produced. Radium promises to have a high sensitivity for edm searches because of a large enhancement due to the unique level structure, which exhibits almost degenerate P and metastable D states [1]. In order to learn and develop the spectroscopic techniques and trapping tool, we are working in parallel with barium, which has a level scheme very similar to radium. As a first step we will measure the lifetime of the metastable D-states as well as their hyperfine structure splitting. Once radium is available at KVI we will use our experience to do this spectroscopy with radium. We report on the status of the experiment and prospects for the future.

[1] V.A. Dzuba, V.V. Flambaum, and J.S.M. Ginges, Phys. Rev. A 61, 062509 (2000); V.V. Flambaum, Phys. Rev. A 60, R2611, (1999).