Our publication “Nuclear Excitation of the 229Th Isomer via Defect States in DopedCrystals” is a joint result of the Heidelberg Team (Brenden, Pavlo, Adriana), the Vienna DFT group (Martin, Johannes, Peter) and the Vienna experimentalist (Kjeld, Tomas, Thorsten). It introduces the concept of electron bridge excitation of the Th-229 nucleus using electronic defect states, which emerge when doping Thorium into host crystal materials. We were able to show that the excitation rate can be enhanced by 2 orders of magnitudes using this “trick”, compared to direct radiative excitation. The remaining open question is the exact energy of these defect states for the specific CaF2 system. We are working on this, both theoretically and experimentally, more joint publications ahead …

Find the pdf on the arXiv preprint server here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.09992.pdf

Find the published article here: https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.032501