Hauptseite > Publikationsdatenbank > Measurement of the occupation number of metastable atoms in the hyperfine-substate β$_3$ in an atomic hydrogen beam |
Contribution to a conference proceedings | FZJ-2023-04609 |
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2023
Sissa Medialab Trieste, Italy
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Please use a persistent id in citations: doi:10.22323/1.433.0007 doi:10.34734/FZJ-2023-04609
Abstract: After its discovery in 1947 by Willis Eugene Lamb and Robert C. Retherford the Lamb shift was used to create Lamb shift polarimeter to separate the 2S${_{1/2}}$ α1 and α2 hyperfinesubstates of hydrogen as well as the α3 substate of deuterium. But for a new project at theTechnical University of Munich, investigation of the bound-beta decay of a neutron into a hydrogen atom anda neutrino, a Lamb shift polarimeter is needed that is also capable of separating the β3substate of hydrogen. Unfortunately, our first attempt to use a Sona transition unit toexchange the occupation numbers between α1 and β3 failed, because of the unexpectedcomplexity of the transitions in this unit [1]. The second idea of using a new kind of spinfilterwhich uses two radio frequencies to separate all four hyperfine substates of hydrogen alsofailed.Our third attempt is now to build a transition unit that can induce magnetic dipole transitionsbetween α2 and β3 as well as between α2 and β4 (π transitions, i.e. an exchange of the occupation numbers of these states). This is a similartransition to what is used in atomic beam sources, in this case not for ground state atoms but for metastableatoms, which requires a much lower radio frequency. Another difference of this new idea isthe smaller interaction time of the atoms with the photons inside the transition unit due totheir much higher velocity of roughly 2⋅10$^5$ m/s compared to velocities of about 10$^3$ m/s in an atomic beam source.
Keyword(s): Nuclei and Particles (1st) ; Nuclear Physics (2nd)
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