Scientists proposed technology for measuring the spectra
of ions in superheavy chemical elements with atomic numbers
above 102. Their research results were published
in Physical Review Letters and presented
in the Physics magazine.

Artificial elements
with atomic numbers above 102 are produced by accelerators
and recoil separators at the rate of one ion per second at
best and decay within dozens of seconds. Traditional
spectroscopic techniques enabled studying the atomic
structure up to nobelium (Z=102).

A group of
scientists from Germany, Russia, and the United States,
including Alexei Buchachenko, a professor at the Skoltech
Center for Energy Science and Technology (CEST), created a
new technique, stepping beyond the Z=102 limit in the
Periodic Table.

The new method termed laser resonance
chromatography involves exciting ions with a laser and then
measuring their drift times in an inert buffer gas. Ions
have different drift velocities when in different electronic
states, so some ions are faster or slower to appear on the
detector than others, which means that the excitation laser
comes in resonance with the electronic transition of the
ion. In contrast to common spectroscopic techniques that
detect photons or ions with a certain charge-to-mass ratio,
the new method identifies the ion’s electronic state based
on the subtle dependence of its interactions with buffer gas
on the ion’s electronic configuration.

According to
Alexei Buchachenko, spectroscopic characterization of
superheavy elements is of fundamental importance for
cosmology, astrophysics, and advancement of the atomic
structure theory. “Thus far, we have been able to
confidently predict laser resonance chromatography for
lawrencium (Z=103), the last heavy element that
remains unexplored, and model optimum conditions for its
experimental realization. Our method opens up broad
prospects for addressing theoretical challenges in different
fields of atomic and nuclear physics, and I hope that going
forward, our collaboration will help look into at least some
of them. We are thankful to the European Research Council
and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research for supporting
our research
effort.”

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