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Article Dans Une Revue Nature Année : 2020

Precise test of quantum electrodynamics and determination of fundamental constants with HD+ ions

Résumé

Bound three-body quantum systems are important systems for fundamental physics. They enable tests of quantum electrodynamics theory and provide access to the fundamental constants of atomic physics and to nuclear properties. Molecular hydrogen ions, the simplest molecules, are representatives of this class. The metastability of the vibration–rotation levels in their ground electronic states offers the potential for extremely high spectroscopic resolution. Consequently, these systems provide independent access to the Rydberg constant (R_∞), the ratios of electron mass to proton mass (m_e/m_p) and electron mass to deuteron mass (m_e/m_d), proton and deuteron nuclear radii, and high-level tests of quantum electrodynamics. Conventional spectroscopy techniques for molecular ions have long been unable to provide precision competitive with that of ab initio theory, which has strongly improved in recent years. Here we improve our rotational spectroscopy technique for a sympathetically cooled cluster of molecular ions stored in a linear radiofrequency trap by nearly two orders in accuracy. We measured a set of hyperfine components of the rotational transition. An evaluation resulted in the most accurate test of a quantum-three-body prediction so far, at the level of 5 × 10^(−11), limited by the current uncertainties of the fundamental constants. We determined the value of the fundamental constants R∞.m_e(1/m_p+1/m_d) and m_e/m_p with a fractional uncertainty of 2 × 10^(−11), in agreement with but more precise than current CODATA2018 values. These results are also strong evidence of the correctness of previous key high-precision measurements. Furthermore, our work yields a more than 20-fold stronger bound for a hypothetical fifth force between a proton and a deuteron.
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hal-03058791 , version 1 (11-12-2020)

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S. Alighanbari, G. S. Giri, Florin Lucian Constantin, V. I. Korobov, S. Schiller. Precise test of quantum electrodynamics and determination of fundamental constants with HD+ ions. Nature, 2020, 581 (7807), pp.152-158. ⟨10.1038/s41586-020-2261-5⟩. ⟨hal-03058791⟩
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