Precision spectroscopy of RaF molecules for fundamental physics

ORAL  · Invited

Abstract

Compared to atoms, molecules can offer more than five orders of magnitude enhanced sensitivity to violations of fundamental symmetries, enabling the possibility to probe energy scales beyond hundreds of TeV. Containing octupole-deformed nuclei, radium monofluoride (RaF) is expected to be highly sensitive to the parity-violating nuclear anapole moment as well as to the parity- and time-reversal violating nuclear Schiff and magnetic quadrupole moments. In this talk, I will present the latest results obtained from a series of laser spectroscopy experiments performed on short-lived RaF molecules. I will first describe a measurement of the isotope shift of five RaF isotopologues, 223-226,228RaF. These results demonstrate the particularly high sensitivity of RaF to nuclear size effects, offering a stringent test of models describing the electronic density within the radium nucleus. I will then show preliminary results from high-resolution laser spectroscopy experiments of 223RaF and 226RaF. Rotational and hyperfine constants of these two isotopologues will be presented. These results represent the first of their kind performed on radioactive, short-lived molecules, opening the way for precision studies and new physics searches in these systems.

*This work was supported the ERC Consolidator Grant No. 648381 (FNPMLS); the Office of Nuclear Physics, U.S. Department of Energy, under grants DESC0021176 and DE-SC0021179; the MISTI Global Seed Funds; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Projektnummer 328961117 – SFB 1319 ELCH; STFC grants ST/L005794/1, ST/P004423/1 and ST/L005786/1 and Ernest Rutherford Grant No. ST/L002868/1; projects from FWOVlaanderen, GOA 15/010 from KU Leuven and BriX IAP Research Program No. P7/12; the European Unions Grant Agreement 654002 (ENSAR2); the Russian Science Foundation under grant N 18-12-00227 (year 2020) and 21-42-04411 (year 2021); the BMBF grants 05P15HGCIA and 05P18HGCIA.

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Publication: RF Garcia Ruiz, R Berger, J Billowes, CL Binnersley, ML Bissell, AA Breier, AJ Brinson, K Chrysalidis, T Cocolios, B Cooper, et al., "Spectroscopy of short-lived radioactive molecules," Nature 581, 396 (2020).
Udrescu, S. M., et al. "Isotope Shifts of Radium Monofluoride Molecules." arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.10549 (2021).
Udrescu, S. M., et al. "Isotope Shifts of Radium Monofluoride Molecules." Phys. Rev. Lett., Accepted as Editors' Suggestion (2021)

Presenters

  • Silviu-Marian Udrescu

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • Silviu-Marian Udrescu

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz

    • MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CERN
    • MIT

  • Alex Brinson

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Konstantin Gaul

    • Fachbereich Chemie, Philipps – Universität Marburg

  • Robert Berger

    • Fachbereich Chemie, Philipps – Universität Marburg

  • Jon Billowes

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Cory Binnersley

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Mark L Bissell

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Alex Breier

    • Laboratory for Astrophysics, Institute of Physics, University of Kassel

  • Katerina Chrysalidis

    • CERN

  • Thomas E Cocolios

    • KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern − en Stralingsfysica

  • Ben Cooper

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Kieran Flanagan

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester; Photon Science Institute, The University of Manchester

  • Thomas Giesen

    • Laboratory for Astrophysics, Institute of Physics, University of Kassel

  • Ruber de Groote

    • Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä

  • Serge Franchoo

    • Institut de Physique Nucleaire d'Orsay

  • Fredrik P Gustafsson

    • KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern − en Stralingsfysica

  • Timur Isaev

    • NRC Kurchatov Institute-PNPI

  • Agota Koszorus

    • KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern − en Stralingsfysica

  • Gerda Neyens

    • CERN; 6 - KU Leuven, Instituut voor Kern − en Stralingsfysica

  • Holly Perrett

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Christopher Ricketts

    • School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester

  • Sebastian Rothe

    • CERN

  • Adam Vernon

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Klaus Wendt

    • Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg − Universität Mainz

  • Frank Wienholtz

    • CERN; Institut für Physik, Universität Greifswald

  • Shane Wilkins

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology; CERN

  • Xiaofei Yang

    • School of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Technology, Peking University