Physics – Atomic Physics
Scientific paper
2011-05-25
Science 333, 196 (2011)
Physics
Atomic Physics
14 pages, 6 figures
Scientific paper
Precision spectroscopy of simple atomic systems has refined our understanding of the fundamental laws of quantum physics. In particular, helium spectroscopy has played a crucial role in describing two-electron interactions, determining the fine-structure constant and extracting the size of the helium nucleus. Here we present a measurement of the doubly-forbidden 1557-nanometer transition connecting the two metastable states of helium (the lowest energy triplet state 2 3S1 and first excited singlet state 2 1S0), for which quantum electrodynamic and nuclear size effects are very strong. This transition is fourteen orders of magnitude weaker than the most predominantly measured transition in helium. Ultracold, sub-microkelvin, fermionic 3He and bosonic 4He atoms are used to obtain a precision of 8.10^{-12}, providing a stringent test of two-electron quantum electrodynamic theory and of nuclear few-body theory.
Borbely J. S.
Eikema Kjeld S. E.
Hoogerland M. D.
Rooij van R.
Rozendaal R. A.
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