Measurement of dipole moment of aluminum chloride

In astronomy, diatomic molecules are known to participate in stellar formation and are relevant for the modelling of exoplanets' atmospheres. Moreover, the long range dipolar interaction can enable interesting phenomena that may be applicable in physical chemistry and quantum computing. However, often even basic molecular properties are only known to an accuracy that is insufficient for the desired applications and survey spectroscopy is needed. Here we present our recent measurement of the electric dipole moment of aluminum monochloride (AlCl). To that end, we measure the DC-Stark shift of the X$\Sigma$1X <- A$\Pi$1 transition at 261.5 nm in AlCl in a cryogenic buffer gas beam. We present details on our experimental apparatus and our ab initio calculations, which are in excellent agreement with our measurement.