The Electron Mass and Calcium Isotope Shifts

High-Precision Measurements of Bound-Electron g-Factors of Highly Charged Ions

Florian Köhler-Langes

• Publisher: Springer
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319508764
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319508771
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Atomic & Molecular Physics

This thesis presents the first isotope-shift measurement of bound-electron g-factors of highly charged ions and determines the most precise value of the electron mass in atomic mass units, which exceeds the value in the literature by a factor of 13. As the lightest fundamental massive particle, the electron is one of nature's few central building blocks. A precise knowledge of its intrinsic properties, such as its mass, is mandatory for the most accurate tests in physics - the Quantum Electrodynamics tests that describe one of the four established fundamental interactions in the universe. The underlying measurement principle combines a high-precision measurement of the Larmor-to-cyclotron frequency ratio on a single hydrogen-like carbon ion studied in a Penning trap with very accurate calculations of the so-called bound-electron g-factor. For the isotope-shift measurement, the bound-electron g-factors of two lithium-like calcium isotopes have been measured with relative uncertainties of a few 10^{-10}, constituting an as yet unrivaled level of precision for lithium-like ions.

 

Table of contents

• Supervisor’s Foreword
• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The g-Factor - Exploring Atomic Structure and Fundamental Constants
• 3 Penning Trap Physics
• 4 Towards the Measurement of the Larmor-to-Cyclotron Frequency Ratio
• 5 Determination of the Atomic Mass of the Electron
• 6 Probing the Isotope Shift: Δg=g(40Ca17+)-g(48Ca17+)
• 7 Outlook - A New Generation of High-Precision Penning Trap
• Curriculum Vitae