Parity-violation studies with partially stripped ions

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates how parity-violating effects influence photoexcitation rates in highly charged ions, proposing that future circular dichroism measurements could reveal details of electron-nucleus weak interactions.

Contribution

It develops a relativistic Dirac theory approach to analyze parity-violation effects in ionic level mixing and calculates excitation rate differences for specific transitions in highly charged ions.

Findings

Parity-violating level mixing affects excitation rates.

Circular dichroism differences can indicate weak interaction effects.

Potential for experimental detection at CERN facilities.

Abstract

We present a theoretical study of photoexcitation of highly charged ions from their ground states, a process which can be realized at the Gamma Factory at CERN. Special attention is paid to the question of how the excitation rates are affected by the mixing of opposite-parity ionic levels, which is induced both by an external electric field and the weak interaction between electrons and the nucleus. In order to reinvestigate this "Stark-plus-weak-interaction" mixing, well-known in neutral atomic systems, we employ relativistic Dirac theory. Based on the developed approach, detailed calculations are performed for the ${\rm 1s}_{1/2} \to {\rm 2s}_{1/2}$ and ${\rm 1s}^2 \; {\rm 2s}_{1/2} \to {\rm 1s}^2 \; {\rm 3s}_{1/2}$ (M1 + parity-violating-E1) transitions in hydrogen- and lithium-like ions, respectively. In particular, we focus on the difference between the excitation rates obtained for the right- and left-circularly polarized incident light. This difference arises due to the parity violating mixing of ionic levels and is usually characterized in terms of the circular-dichroism parameter. We argue that future measurements of circular dichroism, performed with highly charged ions in the SPS or LHC rings, may provide valuable information on the electron-nucleus weak-interaction coupling.