Abstract
Measurements of atomic transitions in different isotopes offer key information on the nuclear charge radius. The anticipated high-precision experimental techniques, augmented by atomic calculations, will soon enable extraction of the higher-order radial moments of the charge density distribution. To assess the value of such measurements for nuclear structure research, we study the information content of the fourth radial moment $\rf$ by means of nuclear density functional theory and a multiple correlation analysis. We show that $\rf$ can be directly related to the surface thickness of nuclear density, a fundamental property of the atomic nucleus that is difficult to obtain for radioactive systems. Precise knowledge of these radial moments is essential to establish reliable constraints on the existence of new forces from precision isotope shift measurements .
Highlights
A precise knowledge of the electron-nucleus interaction in atoms can provide access to physical phenomena relevant to a wide range of energy scales
Measurements of the corresponding frequencies, typically of the order of MHz, allow changes in the root-mean-squared nuclear charge radii to be extracted [5,6]. Extending these measurements for isotopes away from stability is of marked and growing interest for low-energy nuclear physics, as the data on the nuclear size are essential for our understanding of the nuclear many-body problem [5,7,8,9,10]
This has motivated the rapid progress of experimental techniques which are continuously pushing the frontiers of precision measurements
Summary
Measurements of atomic transitions in different isotopes offer key information on the nuclear charge radius. To assess the value of such measurements for nuclear structure research, we study the information content of the fourth radial moment r4 by means of nuclear density functional theory and a multiple correlation analysis. We show that r4 can be directly related to the surface thickness of nuclear density, a fundamental property of the atomic nucleus that is difficult to obtain for radioactive systems. Precise knowledge of these radial moments is essential to establish reliable constraints on the existence of new forces from precision isotope shift measurements
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