- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Letters

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Fermion-Selective Tests of New Physics with the Bound-Electron g Factor

M. Moretti, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman

PDF

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011803 – Published 9 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/zyb6-lvy8

Abstract

The use of high-precision measurements of the g factor of single-electron ions is considered as a detailed probe for physics beyond the standard model. The contribution of the exchange of a hypothetical force-carrying scalar boson to the g factor is calculated for the ground state of H-like ions and used to derive bounds on the parameters of that force. Similarly to the isotope shift, we employ the nuclide shift, i.e., the difference for elements with different proton and/or neutron numbers, in order to increase the experimental sensitivity to the new physics contribution. In particular we find, combining available measurements with current precision with different ions, that the coupling constant for the interaction between an electron and a proton can be constrained up to 3 orders of magnitude better than with the best current atomic data and theory.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (38)

  1. X. Fan, T. G. Myers, B. A. D. Sukra, and G. Gabrielse, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 071801 (2023).
  2. S. Volkov, Phys. Rev. D 100, 096004 (2019).
  3. P. J. Mohr, D. B. Newell, B. N. Taylor, and E. Tiesinga, Rev. Mod. Phys. 97, 025002 (2025).
  4. S. Sturm, A. Wagner, B. Schabinger, J. Zatorski, Z. Harman, W. Quint, G. Werth, C. H. Keitel, and K. Blaum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 023002 (2011).
  5. S. Sturm, A. Wagner, M. Kretzschmar, W. Quint, G. Werth, and K. Blaum, Phys. Rev. A 87, 030501(R) (2013).
  6. S. Sturm, F. Köhler, J. Zatorski, A. Wagner, Z. Harman, G. Werth, W. Quint, C. H. Keitel, and K. Blaum, Nature (London) 506, 467 (2014).
  7. F. Heiße, M. Door, T. Sailer, P. Filianin, J. Herkenhoff, C. M. König, K. Kromer, D. Lange, J. Morgner, A. Rischka, C. Schweiger, B. Tu, Y. N. Novikov, S. Eliseev, S. Sturm, and K. Blaum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 253002 (2023).
  8. T. Sailer, V. Debierre, Z. Harman, F. Heiße, C. König, J. Morgner, B. Tu, A. V. Volotka, C. H. Keitel, K. Blaum, and S. Sturm, Nature (London) 606, 479 (2022).
  9. K. Pachucki, U. D. Jentschura, and V. A. Yerokhin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 150401 (2004).
  10. K. Pachucki and M. Puchalski, Phys. Rev. A 96, 032503 (2017).
  11. V. A. Yerokhin and Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. A 95, 060501(R) (2017).
  12. S. G. Karshenboim, R. N. Lee, and A. I. Milstein, Phys. Rev. A 72, 042101 (2005).
  13. V. M. Shabaev, Phys. Rep. 356, 119 (2002).
  14. T. Beier, I. Lindgren, H. Persson, S. Salomonson, P. Sunnergren, H. Häffner, and N. Hermanspahn, Phys. Rev. A 62, 032510 (2000).
  15. T. Beier, Phys. Rep. 339, 79 (2000).
  16. A. Czarnecki, M. Dowling, J. Piclum, and R. Szafron, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 043203 (2018).
  17. D. A. Glazov, F. Köhler-Langes, A. V. Volotka, K. Blaum, F. Heiße, G. Plunien, W. Quint, S. Rau, V. M. Shabaev, S. Sturm, and G. Werth, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 173001 (2019).
  18. B. Sikora, V. A. Yerokhin, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 123001 (2025).
  19. J. Zatorski, N. S. Oreshkina, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 063005 (2012).
  20. M. Srednicki, Quantum Field Theory (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2007).
  21. V. Debierre, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman, Phys. Lett. B 807, 135527 (2020).
  22. R. A. Hegstrom, Phys. Rev. A 7, 451 (1973).
  23. H. Cakir, V. A. Yerokhin, N. S. Oreshkina, B. Sikora, I. I. Tupitsyn, C. H. Keitel, and Z. Harman, Phys. Rev. A 101, 062513 (2020).
  24. K. Pachucki, A. Czarnecki, U. D. Jentschura, and V. A. Yerokhin, Phys. Rev. A 72, 022108 (2005).
  25. M. Door et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 063002 (2025).
  26. K. Ono, Y. Saito, T. Ishiyama, T. Higomoto, T. Takano, Y. Takasu, Y. Yamamoto, M. Tanaka, and Y. Takahashi, Phys. Rev. X 12, 021033 (2022).
  27. C. Solaro, S. Meyer, K. Fisher, J. C. Berengut, E. Fuchs, and M. Drewsen, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 123003 (2020).
  28. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/zyb6-lvy8 for details about the construction of blue and green dashed lines of Fig. 2, which includes Refs. [7,8,16,29,30].
  29. B. Sikora (private communication).
  30. S. Sturm (private communication).
  31. V. A. Yerokhin, K. Pachucki, Z. Harman, and C. H. Keitel, Phys. Rev. A 85, 022512 (2012).
  32. D. L. Moskovkin and V. M. Shabaev, Phys. Rev. A 73, 052506 (2006).
  33. I. Angeli and K. Marinova, At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 99, 69 (2013).
  34. A. Matveev, C. G. Parthey, K. Predehl, J. Alnis, A. Beyer, R. Holzwarth, T. Udem, T. Wilken, N. Kolachevsky, M. Abgrall, D. Rovera, C. Salomon, P. Laurent, G. Grosche, O. Terra, T. Legero, H. Schnatz, S. Weyers, B. Altschul, and T. W. Hänsch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 230801 (2013).
  35. V. A. Yerokhin and V. M. Shabaev, J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data 44, 033103 (2015).
  36. R. M. Potvliege, New J. Phys. 27, 045002 (2025).
  37. M. P. A. Jones, R. M. Potvliege, and M. Spannowsky, Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013244 (2020).
  38. J. Morgner, B. Tu, K. C. M., T. Sailer, F. Heisse, H. Bekker, B. Sikora, C. Lyu, V. A. Yerokhin, Z. Harman, J. R. Crespo López-Urrutia, C. H. Keitel, S. Sturm, and K. Blaum, Nature (London) 622, 53 (2023).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 011803– Published 9 January, 2026
  • Received 22 July 2025
  • Accepted 17 December 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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 the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation