Shining Light on Radioactive Molecules

照亮放射性分子

• 批准号: ST/X00502X/1
• 负责人: Kieran Flanagan
• 金额: $ 12.51万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ST%2FX00502X%2F1
• 关键词: Shining; Light; Radioactive; Molecules

Short-lived radioactive molecules constructed with octupole deformed nuclei represent a new frontier for high precision experiments. Such molecules are predicted to have sensitivity to parity and time-reversal violating effects that are up to three orders of magnitude larger than the current generation of stable molecules. Advances in molecular trapping techniques make it feasible to consider experiments that study molecules with coherence times of up to 10s. Such an arrangement with radioactive molecules would extend eEDM searches by more than 4 orders of magnitude, probing PeV energy scales and providing a complementary search domain to proposed future accelerator projects with table top instrumentation. Consecutive STFC consolidated grants have supported the developed a uniquely sensitive instrument (CRIS) that can perform high resolution spectroscopy on short-lived radioactive molecules with lifetimes down to milliseconds. This project will further enhance the capability of this technology and enable the first spectroscopy measurements on a range of radioactive molecules. This will allow the identification of the most sensitive molecular systems, critical to prepare future high precision experiments. This project will also lead to new opportunities with radioactive molecules for the purpose of studying the atomic nucleus. We have already demonstrated in the case of RaF that diatomic molecules can have enhanced sensitivity to the nuclear charge radius and distribution of magnetisation. This project and investment will enable the development of radioactive molecules as new sensors for future experiments to better understand the fundamental forces that govern the nucleus and search for new physics beyond the standard model of particle physics.

用八极子形变核构造的短寿命放射性分子是高精度实验的新前沿。据预测，这种分子对宇称和时间反转违反效应的敏感性比当前一代的稳定分子高3个数量级。分子捕获技术的进步使得考虑研究相干时间长达10秒的分子的实验成为可能。与放射性分子的这种安排将扩展eEDM搜索超过4个数量级，探测PeV能量尺度，并为拟议的未来使用台式仪器的加速器项目提供补充搜索领域。连续的STFC合并拨款支持开发一种独特的敏感仪器（CRIS），该仪器可以对寿命短至毫秒的短寿命放射性分子进行高分辨率光谱分析。该项目将进一步提高该技术的能力，并使一系列放射性分子的光谱测量成为可能。这将允许识别最敏感的分子系统，对准备未来的高精度实验至关重要。这个项目还将为研究原子核的放射性分子带来新的机会。我们已经在RaF的例子中证明了双原子分子可以增强对核电荷半径和磁化分布的敏感性。这个项目和投资将使放射性分子的发展成为未来实验的新传感器，以更好地理解控制原子核的基本力，并寻找超越粒子物理标准模型的新物理。