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Penning-trap mass measurement of He3

O. Bezrodnova1, S. Sasidharan1, W. Quint2, S. Sturm1, and K. Blaum1

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Phys. Rev. A 111, L040801 – Published 9 April, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.111.L040801

Abstract

We have determined the atomic mass of He3 to 12 parts per trillion relative precision from a measurement of the cyclotron frequency ratio of He+3 and C4+12 in a Penning trap. From the obtained mass of the He+3 ion, the mass of the neutral atom can be calculated without loss of precision: m(He3)=3.016029322011(35) u. This result provides independent, high-precision data for the last missing link between the masses in the regime of light ions, thereby resolving discrepancies in the reported masses of light atomic nuclei from various experiments.

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Phys. Rev. A 111, L040801– Published 9 April, 2025
  • Received 18 December 2024
  • Accepted 20 March 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

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