Eur. Phys. J. D 57, 27-32 (2010)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2010-00016-9

Hydrogen spectroscopy with a Lamb-shift polarimeter

An alternative approach towards anti-hydrogen spectroscopy experiments

¹ I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, 50937 Köln, Germany
² Institut für Kernphysik and Jülich Center for Hadron Physics, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany
³ Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, 188300 Gatchina, Russia
⁴ Institut für Kernphysik, Universität zu Köln, 50937 Köln, Germany

Corresponding author: westig@ph1.uni-koeln.de

Received: 10 August 2009
Revised: 17 November 2009
Published online: 26 January 2010

Abstract

A Lamb-shift polarimeter, which has been built for a fast determination of the polarization of protons and deuterons of an atomic-beam source and which is frequently used in the ANKE experiment at COSY-Jülich, is shown to be an excellent device for atomic-spectroscopy measurements of metastable hydrogen isotopes. It is demonstrated that magnetic and electric dipole transitions in hydrogen can be measured as a function of the external magnetic field, giving access to the full Breit-Rabi diagram for the 2²S_1/2 and the 2²P_1/2 states. This will allow the study of hyperfine structure, g factors and the classical Lamb shift. Although the data are not yet competitive with state-of-the-art measurements, the potential of the method is enormous, including a possible application to anti-hydrogen spectroscopy.