Shining Light on Radioactive Molecules

由八极形变核构成的短寿命放射性分子代表着高精度实验的新前沿。据预测，这类分子对宇称和时间反转的破坏效应具有敏感性，这些效应比当前一代的稳定分子大三个数量级。分子捕获技术的进步使研究相干时间长达10秒的分子的实验成为可能。与放射性分子的这种安排将把eEDM搜索扩展4个数量级以上，探测PeV能级，并为拟议的未来使用桌面仪器的加速器项目提供一个补充搜索领域。连续的STFC综合赠款支持该中心开发了一种独特的灵敏仪器(CRIS)，该仪器可以对寿命低至毫秒的短寿命放射性分子进行高分辨率光谱分析。该项目将进一步增强这项技术的能力，并实现对一系列放射性分子的首次光谱测量。这将允许识别最敏感的分子系统，这对准备未来的高精度实验至关重要。该项目还将为研究原子核的放射性分子带来新的机会。我们已经证明，在RAF的情况下，双原子分子可以增强对核电荷半径和磁化分布的敏感性。这一项目和投资将使放射性分子成为未来实验的新传感器，以便更好地了解支配原子核的基本力，并在粒子物理标准模型之外寻找新的物理。

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.