Pr<sup>10+</sup> as a candidate for a high-accuracy optical clock for tests of fundamental physics.

ORAL

Abstract

We propose In-like Pr10+ as a candidate for the development of a high-accuracy optical clock with high sensitivity to a time variation of the fine-structure constant, \dot{α}/α, as well as favorable experimental systematics. We calculate its low-lying energy levels by combining the configuration interaction and the coupled cluster method, achieving uncertainties as low as 0.1%, and improving previous work. We benchmark these results by comparing our calculations for the 5s25p 2P1/2 - 5s25p 2P3/2 transition in Pr10+ with a dedicated measurement and for Pr9+ with a recent experiment, respectively. In addition, we report calculated hyperfine-structure constants for the clock and logic states in Pr10+.

*This work is part of the ``Thorium Nuclear Clock'' project that has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant No. 856415). The calculations in this work were done through the use of Information Technologies resources at the University of Delaware, specifically the high-performance Caviness and DARWIN computer clusters. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants No. PHY-2110102, No. PHY-2309254, and Office of Naval Research Grants No. N00014-22-1-2070 and N00014-20-1-2513. The authors acknowledge the support of the 20FUN01 TSCAC project. This project has received funding from the EMPIR program co-financed by the participating states and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. This work has been supported by the Max Planck Society; the Max-Planck-Riken-PTB--Center for Time, Constants, and Fundamental Symmetries; and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through program grant No. 13N15973 (Projekt VAUQSI).

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Presenters

  • Sergey G Porsev

    • University of Delaware

Authors

  • Sergey G Porsev

    • University of Delaware

  • Sergey G Porsev

    • University of Delaware

  • Charles Cheung

    • University of Delaware

  • Marianna S Safronova

    • University of Delaware

  • Hendrik Bekker

    • Helmholtz-Institut, GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung

  • Nils H Rehbehn

    • Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik

  • Jose R Crespo Lopez-Urrutia

    • Max-Planck-Institut fur Kernphysik

  • Samuel M Brewer

    • Colorado State University