Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 25: Posters: Precision spectroscopy of atoms and ions

A 25.4: Poster

Thursday, March 13, 2008, 16:30–18:30, Poster C3

One single trapped and laser cooled radium ion: Towards an all-optical atomic clock — •Oscar Versolato, Lotje Wansbeek, Lorenz Willmann, Rob Timmermans, and Klaus Jungmann — KVI, University of Groningen

One single trapped Radium ion is an ideal candidate for an all-optical frequency standard (*clock*). This system provides a long coherence time and tractable systematics. If the ion is laser cooled to the Lamb-Dicke regime, first order Doppler shifts are eliminated. Ultra-narrow transitions in radium ions provide an excellent basis for such a high stability clock, using commercially available semiconductor lasers in the visible regime. In certain odd isotopes of radium, the nuclear electric quadrupole shift is absent [1]. Further, the radium ion is an excellent candidate for a high sensitivity experiment to search for a time variation of the finestructure constant [2].

[1] B.K. Sahoo et al., (to be published) [2] V.A. Dzuba, V.V. Flambaum, Phys. Rev. A 61, 034502 (2000)