Determination of the ground-state hyperfine structure in neutral²²⁹Th

Abstract

The ground-state hyperfine structure of neutral 229Th has been measured for the first time using high-resolution resonance ionization spectroscopy. The measurements were performed as a preparatory work aimed at the identification of the predicted low-lying 7.6 eV isomer in 229Th through an investigation of its hyperfine structure. The hyperfine coupling constants have been extracted for the atomic ground state as well as for three excited states at 26 096, 26 113 and 38 278 cm−1. Due to rather small splittings not all hyperfine components were completely resolved and therefore an extensive χ2-error analysis was performed to achieve reliable results. The ground-state transition to the excited state at 38 278 cm−1 was identified to be the most sensitive of the three transitions with regard to the future identification of the isomeric state.