Principal Investigator :

Carlo RIZZO ()
LNCMI (Groupe BMV at LNCMI Toulouse & le groupe BEC au Departement de Physique, Université de Pise, Italie)

Type of project : Disruptive Project

Date (start/end) : 2014 - 2016

      

Abstract

The project target, based on the combination of atomic physics/laser spectroscopy tools and of high-magnetic field expertise, is the high precision measurement of the magnetic response of neutral atoms in excited states and immersed into the very high magnetic fields available at the LNCMI. It will cover fundamental research in atomic physics and quantum electrodynamics, applications to metrology and also industrial fallout. The laser spectroscopic precision and accuracy will be applied to investigate the Landé g-factor of excited states for neutral atoms. Our attention will experimentally focus on the first excited states of different alkali atoms, whose magnetic properties data have a limited resolution, while recent theoretical studies have determined accurately the relativistic and quantum-electrodynamics corrections. An investigation on rubidium and cesium atoms, for different P,S and D excited states, in static magnetic fields up to 14T and pulsed fields up to 40T, will produce improvements in the g-factors up to two orders of magnitude, where the corrections from the free-electron value are important. Our high magnetic field approach could be used for metrological applications on optical clocks based on one-photon or two-photon transitions. As a byproduct, a flexible tool for very precise magnetic field measurements will be developed.