{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/precision-measurement-of-the-helium-2-3-s-1-2","title":"Measurement of a helium tune-out frequency: an independent test of quantum electrodynamics","arxiv_id":"2107.00149","date":"2021-06-30","proceeding":null,"authors":["B. M. Henson","J. A. Ross","K. F. Thomas","C. N. Kuhn","D. K. Shin","S. S. Hodgman","Yong-Hui Zhang","Li-Yan Tang","G. W. F. Drake","A. T. Bondy","A. G. Truscott","K. G. H. Baldwin"],"abstract":"Despite quantum electrodynamics (QED) being one of the most stringently tested theories underpinning modern physics, recent precision atomic spectroscopy measurements have uncovered several small discrepancies between experiment and theory. One particularly powerful experimental observable that tests QED independently of traditional energy level measurements is the `tune-out' frequency, where the dynamic polarizability vanishes and the atom does not interact with applied laser light. In this work, we measure the `tune-out' frequency for the $2^{3\\!}S_1$ state of helium between transitions to the $2^{3\\!}P$ and $3^{3\\!}P$ manifolds and compare it to new theoretical QED calculations. The experimentally determined value of $725\\,736\\,700\\,$$(40_{\\mathrm{stat}},260_{\\mathrm{syst}})$ MHz is within ${\\sim} 1.7\\sigma$ of theory ($725\\,736\\,252(9)$ MHz), and importantly resolves both the QED contributions (${\\sim} 30 \\sigma$) and novel retardation (${\\sim} 2 \\sigma$) corrections.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.00149v4","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.00149v4.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"precision-measurement-of-the-helium-2-3-s-1-2","repo_url":"https://github.com/hebecanu/tune_out_v2","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}