Detection of metastable electronic states by Penning trap mass spectrometry

State-of-the-art optical clocks achieve fractional precisions of $10^{-18}$ and below using ensembles of atoms in optical lattices or individual ions in radio-frequency traps. Promising candidates for novel clocks are highly charged ions (HCIs) and nuclear transitions, which are largely insensitive to external perturbations and reach wavelengths beyond the optical range, now becoming accessible to frequency combs. However, insufficiently accurate atomic structure calculations still hinder the identification of suitable transitions in HCIs. Here, we report on the discovery of a long-lived metastable electronic state in a HCI by measuring the mass difference of the ground and the excited state in Re, the first non-destructive, direct determination of an electronic excitation energy. This result agrees with our advanced calculations, and we confirmed them with an Os ion with the same electronic configuration. We used the high-precision Penning-trap mass spectrometer PENTATRAP, unique in its synchronous use of five individual traps for simultaneous mass measurements. The cyclotron frequency ratio $R$ of the ion in the ground state to the metastable state could be determined to a precision of $\delta R=1\cdot 10^{-11}$, unprecedented in the heavy atom regime. With a lifetime of about 130 days, the potential soft x-ray frequency reference at $\nu=4.86\cdot 10^{16}\,\text{Hz}$ has a linewidth of only $\Delta \nu\approx 5\cdot 10^{-8}\,\text{Hz}$, and one of the highest electronic quality factor ($Q=\frac{\nu}{\Delta \nu}\approx 10^{24}$) ever seen in an experiment. Our low uncertainty enables searching for more HCI soft x-ray clock transitions, needed for promising precision studies of fundamental physics in a thus far unexplored frontier

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three genomic nomenclature systems to all sequence data from the World Health Organization European Region available until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation, compare the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2