Measurement of the Stark shift within the 6P1/2-7S1/2 378-nm transition in atomic thallium -: art. no. 052504

Using a thallium atomic beam apparatus and a stabilized, frequency-doubled diode laser system, we have measured the scalar Stark shift in the 6P(1/2)-7S(1/2) transition of thallium. We determine the Stark shift to be Deltanu(S)=-103.23(39) kHz/(kV/cm)(2), providing more than an order of magnitude improvement in precision over earlier measurements of this quantity. This measurement serves as a stringent test of recently published thallium parity nonconservation calculations.