Internal conversion from excited electronic states of 229Th ions
Bilous, P. V., Kazakov, G. A., Moore, I., Schumm, T., & Pálffy, A. (2017). Internal conversion from excited electronic states of 229Th ions. Physical Review A, 95 (3), 032503. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.95.032503
Published in
Physical Review ADate
2017Copyright
© 2017 American Physical Society. Published in this repository with the kind permission of the publisher.
The process of internal conversion from excited electronic states is investigated theoretically for the case of the vacuum-ultraviolet nuclear transition of
229
Th
. Due to the very low transition energy, the
229
Th
nucleus offers the unique possibility to open the otherwise forbidden internal conversion nuclear decay channel for thorium ions via optical laser excitation of the electronic shell. We show that this feature can be exploited to investigate the isomeric state properties via observation of internal conversion from excited electronic configurations of
Th
+
and
Th
2
+
ions. A possible experimental realization of the proposed scenario at the nuclear laser spectroscopy facility IGISOL in Jyväskylä, Finland, is discussed.