Current Work to Improve Precision in Measurements of Helium Fine Structure
POSTER
Abstract
With the recent improvement on the 2$^{\mathrm{3}}$P Helium fine structure calculation by Pachucki and the quest for finding the most precise value for $\alpha $, spectroscopic measurement of the helium atom has a great advantage to find this primary constant. Distinctively, the 32 GHz atomic fine structure of 2$^{\mathrm{3}}$P J2 to J0 interval with uncertainty of 100Hz leads a factor of three better than the best current value of $\alpha $ and an impulsion to the theory to evaluate the largest term of order m$\alpha^{\mathrm{8}}$ is our ambition. This measurement not only tests the quantum electrodynamics, but also establishes the fine structure constant $\alpha $ with uncertainty of 1.6 ppb. The electron g-factor measurement of $\alpha $, even though, is by far more accurate at 0.37 ppb, our end result would be a examination to the best alternative atom recoil measurements with different approach. To reach on this level of accuracy, we implement our frequency selector with precision better than 1 to 100 along with laser cooling mechanism to enhance the signal to noise ratio by increasing the signal strength.
*This work is supported by NSF grant