ERC Advanced Grant · 2023
Highly Ionized Trapped 229-Thorium:A New Paradigm Towards a Nuclear Clock
Among the more than 3000 nuclides that are naturally occurring or that have been artificially synthesized, thorium-229 is truly exceptional. Its remarkably low excitation energy makes it the ideal candidate for nuclear frequency metrology, surpassing current atomic clocks. Such a "nuclear clock" opens doors to fundamental physics, testing time-variations of constants and exploring the enigma of dark matter. Within HITHOR a conceptually novel methodology towards such a clock is proposed, eventually leading to a no-electron “bare-nucleus” clock with trapped fully ionized 229Th90+ where all external perturbations from surrounding electrons are absent. Highly-ionized 229Th will be established…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.