Parity nonconservation in radiative recombination of electrons with heavy hydrogenlike ions

TL;DR

This paper investigates parity nonconservation effects in the radiative recombination of electrons with heavy hydrogenlike ions, focusing on states where near-degeneracy enhances observable effects, and explores experimental scenarios for detection.

Contribution

It provides detailed calculations of parity nonconservation effects in specific recombination processes for heavy ions, considering experimental setups with polarized electrons and photons.

Findings

Parity nonconservation effects are significantly enhanced due to near-degeneracy of states.

Two experimental scenarios are analyzed for detecting parity violation.

Calculations for recombination into both $2^1S_0$ and $2^3P_0$ states are presented.

Abstract

The parity nonconservation effect on the radiative recombination of electrons with heavy hydrogenlike ions is studied. Calculations are performed for the recombination into the $2^1S_0$ state of helium-like thorium and gadolinium, where, due to the near-degeneracy of the opposite-parity $2^1S_0$ and $2^3P_0$ states, the effect is strongly enhanced. Two scenarios for possible experiments are studied. In the first scenario, the electron beam is assumed to be fully polarized while the H-like ions are unpolarized and the polarization of the emitted photons is not detected. In the second scenario, the linearly polarized photons are detected in an experiment with unpolarized electrons and ions. Corresponding calculations for the recombination into the $2^3P_0$ state are presented as well.