Journal
PHYSICAL REVIEW A
Volume 86, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.86.022517
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- Australian Research Council
- NCI National Facility at the Australian National University
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Level crossings in the ground state of ions occur when the nuclear charge Z and ion charge Z(ion) are varied along an isoelectronic sequence until the two outermost shells are nearly degenerate. We examine all available level crossings in the periodic table for both near-neutral ions and highly charged ions (HCIs). Normal E1 transitions in HCIs are in x-ray range; however, level crossings allow for optical electromagnetic transitions that could form the reference transition for high-accuracy atomic clocks. Optical E1 (due to configuration mixing), M1, and E2 transitions are available in HCIs near level crossings. We present scaling laws for energies and amplitudes that allow us to make simple estimates of systematic effects of relevance to atomic clocks. HCI clocks could have some advantages over existing optical clocks because certain systematic effects are reduced; for example, they can have much smaller thermal shifts. Other effects such as fine-structure and hyperfine splitting are much larger in HCIs, which can allow for richer spectra. HCIs are excellent candidates for probing variations in the fine-structure constant alpha in atomic systems as there are transitions with the highest sensitivity to alpha variation.
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