Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • NEWS AND VIEWS

Tiny isotopic difference tests standard model of particle physics

A high-precision comparison of the magnetic moments of two isotopically different neon ions opens a path to the search for elusive particles that could explain the unexpectedly low observed mass of the Higgs boson.
  1. Gerald Gwinner

    1. Gerald Gwinner is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Roshani Silwal

    1. Roshani Silwal is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina 28608, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

The co-inventor of the laser, Arthur Schawlow, famously suggested that one should never measure anything but frequency, because time is by far the most accurately measurable quantity. A corollary to this adage might be: if you have to determine the difference between two very similar frequencies, devise a method that measures this difference directly. Easier said than done, perhaps, but this is precisely what Sailer et al.1 have accomplished, as they report in a paper in Nature. In an experimental tour de force, they measured a tiny frequency difference, then used the result to extract the difference between the magnetic moments of two ions of distinct neon isotopes. And they did this with a remarkable fractional precision of half a trillionth the value of the moments themselves, representing a 100-fold improvement over existing methods. In doing so, they have provided a possible way of proving the existence of exotic interactions between electrons and nucleons (protons and neutrons).

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Nature 606, 467-468 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01569-3

References

  1. Sailer, T. et al. Nature 606, 479–483 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Dirac, P. A. M. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 117, 610–624 (1928).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Schwinger, J. Phys. Rev. 73, 416–417 (1948).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Odom, B., Hanneke, D., D’Urso, B. & Gabrielse, G. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 030801-4 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Aoyama, T., Hayakawa, M., Kinoshita, T. & Nio, M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 111807 (2012).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Sturm, S. et al. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 227, 1425–1491 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Rainville, S., Thompson, J. K. & Pritchard, D. E. Science 303, 334–338 (2004).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Angeli, I. & Marinova, K. P. Atomic Data Nucl. Data Tables 99, 69–95 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Graham, P. W., Kaplan, D. E. & Rajendran, S. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 221801-9 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Delaunay, C., Frugiuele, C., Fuchs, E. & Soreq, Y. Phys. Rev. D 96, 115002 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Counts, I. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 123002 (2020).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Solaro, C. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 123003 (2020).

    PubMed  Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Debierre, V., Keitel, C. H. & Harman, Z. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.01668 (2022).

Download references

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links