Towards one-electron ions in Rydberg states for laser spectroscopy

Simple quantum systems play important roles in the determination of fundamental constants. Very recently at NIST, bare nuclei created in an EBIT were extracted and captured in a novel compact Penning trap. This is a step towards production of one-electron ions isolated in an ion trap designed to facilitate recombination experiments and laser spectroscopy. Our goal is to form Rydberg states that can be probed accurately using optical frequency metrology, which could provide a new determination of the Rydberg constant that is independent of the proton radius.