Laser Excites First Nuclear Transition, Advances Nuclear Clock.
Researchers propose a new approach to study thorium-229, the only nuclear transition that can potentially be interrogated with lasers, by using highly charged ions that have only three electrons left in their shell. The ions are accelerated to almost the speed of light in a particle accelerator, allowing them to be excited with a conventional laser in the visible wavelength range. This opens up promising and diverse perspectives for fundamental physics research, including the possibility of testing fundamental constants of nature and searching for particles or fields that go beyond the Standard Model.