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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Nuclear Ground-State Properties from Laser and Mass Spectroscopy

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Atomic physics played an important role in establishing our present-day knowledge on the atomic nucleus. Especially mass spectrometry and optical spectroscopy were the main sources of information on nuclear properties in the early days of nuclear physics. Still now, precise information on nuclear masses (or binding energies) are obtained by mass spectrometry whereas mass differences between two isotopes are usually determined by nuclear-spectroscopy techniques via a determination of the Q-value of nuclear reactions or decay. Almost all our information on the nuclear spins I, the nuclear magnetic dipole moment μ I, the spectroscopic quadrupole moment Q, and the changes in the mean-square charge radii δ , which characterize a nuclear ground-state, stem from atomic spectroscopy [1]. These quantities are accessible via a determination of the hyperfine structure (HFS) in atomic levels or of the isotope shift (IS) in optical transitions. The development of on-line mass separators where long chains of isotopes are available for investigation, the invention of tunable lasers, and recently the development of ion traps coupled to isotope separators led to a renaissance of atomic spectroscopy applied to nuclear physics problems.