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Did anyone understand how they hold a nucleus (not an atom) in a crystal? Nucleus is charged and seeks electrons, I thought you need an electromagnetic trap for
by alexey-salmin 3y ago
Did anyone understand how they hold a nucleus (not an atom) in a crystal? Nucleus is charged and seeks electrons, I thought you need an electromagnetic trap for that (which the article says they don't use).
- spuz 3y agoThey use Th4+ ions, not nuclei. The lack of 4 electrons in the Th cations is compensated for by the surrounding F- anions.
- rsfern 3y agoThey grew CaF2 crystals with a small amount of thorium, which take the place of some of the Ca atoms in the crystal lattice. There’s an illustration in fig 1 of the preprint of what the substitutional defects look like Like the other poster mentions, CaF2 is an ionic crystal, but I don’t think that’s an important detail because you wouldn’t expect a nuclear transition to be affected by the bonding state of the electrons. My guess is it’s just a convenient way to get a very dilute collection of thorium atoms without using an ion trap