Atomic parity violation and its isotopic variation

Submitted by KrystianPuczka on Mon, 10/14/2019 - 19:32
PRELEGENT: 
dr Dionysis Antypas
DataSeminarium: 
2019-10-21
AfiliacjaPrelegenta: 
Helmholtz Institut Mainz
AbstraktSeminarium: 
In the study of electroweak interactions, atomic parity violation (PV) experiments form a powerful tool, providing valuable information about nuclear and particle physics. Ytterbium (Yb) is a good system for such studies, due to its strong PV effect and the availability of many stable isotopes. This brings within reach the possibility to perform high-precision measurements of the isotopic dependence of the PV effect, which would serve as a probe of the neutron skin variation among these different isotopes of the ytterbium nuclei. In addition, a determination of the nuclear spin-dependent contributions to the PV effect would allow an observation of the nuclear anapole moment, and would yield information about the underlying mechanisms of intranuclear weak forces. 
I will give a brief overview of the field of atomic PV, discuss our Yb PV experiment at the Helmholtz-Institute Mainz, and show recent results on the observation of the isotopic variation of the PV effect, as predicted by the electroweak theory.
If time permits, I will report on the results of another experiment, in which we make use of polarization spectroscopy in a vapor cell to search for dark-matter-induced oscillations in fundamental constants. Such oscillations are expected to arise within particular scenarios for light bosonic dark matter.