Isotope shift, non-linearity of King plot and search for nuclear island of stability and new particles

In a joint work of Anna Viatkina, Victor Flambaum and Amy Geddes, a single-particle relativistic formula found to estimate the isotope shift (IS) in many-electron atoms. It is used to predict the behavior of IS in superheavy atoms.

They further analyse different contributions to the non-linearity of King plot arising from Standard Model. Their estimates provide theoretical limitations on the sensitivity of the search for new hypothetical scalar particles using observation of King plot nonlinearities and should help in selection of the most suitable atoms for corresponding experiments.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.00600

Updated: September 18, 2017 — 12:08 pm