Dispelling the curse of the neutron skin in atomic parity violation

Abstract

We perform calculations for the neutron skin of nuclei and its contribution to atomic parity non-conservation (PNC) in many isotopes of Cs, Ba, Sm, Dy, Yb, Tl, Pb, Bi, Fr, Ra. Three problems are addressed: i) Neutron-skin induced errors to single-isotope PNC, ii) Possibility to measure neutron skin using atomic PNC, iii) Neutron-skin induced errors for ratios of PNC effects in different isotopes. In the latter case the correlations in the neutron skin values for different isotopes lead to cancelations of the errors; this makes the isotopic ratio method a competitive tool in a search for new physics beyond the standard model.