Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS
Volume 52, Issue 20, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6455/ab29b8
Keywords
nuclear clock; internal conversion; laser spectroscopy; conversion electron spectroscopy; Th-229m; thorium isomer
Categories
Funding
- European Union [664732]
- DFG [Th956/3-1, Th956/3-2]
- LMU Department of Medical Physics via the Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory
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The elusive 'thorium isomer', i.e. the isomeric first excited state of Th-229, has puzzled the nuclear and fundamental physics communities for more than 40 years. With an exceptionally low excitation energy and a long lifetime it represents the only known candidate so far for an ultra-precise nuclear frequency standard ('nuclear clock'), potentially able to outperform even today's best timekeepers based on atomic shell transitions, and promising a variety of intriguing applications. This tutorial reviews the development of our current knowledge on this exotic nuclear state, from the first indirect evidence in the 1970s, to the recent breakthrough results that pave the way towards the realization of a nuclear clock and its applications in practical fields (satellite based navigational systems and chronometric geodesy) as well as fundamental physics beyond the standard model (the search for topological dark matter and temporal variations of fundamental constants).
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