Frequency-comb-based measurements of lithium and beryllium isotopes for nuclear structure studiesThis paper was presented at the International Conference on Precision Physics of Simple Atomic Systems, held at University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada on 21–26 July 2008.

Abstract

We report on the measurement of the 2s-3s transition frequencies in the stable lithium isotopes and 2s-2p isotope shift measurements of 7,9,10,11Be, using a femtosecond frequency comb. For the beryllium isotopes, we extract the changes in the mean-square nuclear charge radius along the isotope chain by comparison with high-precision atomic mass shift calculations. The 2s-3s transition frequency is compared with theoretical calculations, and possibilities to extract an absolute value for the nuclear charge radius of lithium isotopes are discussed.