Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Garcia Ruiz, R. F.
• Berger, R.
• Billowes, J.
• Binnersley, C. L.
• Bissell, M. L.
• Breier, A. A.
• Brinson, A. J.
• Chrysalidis, K.
• Cocolios, T. E.
• Cooper, B. S.
• Flanagan, K. T.
• Giesen, T. F.
• de Groote, R. P.
• Franchoo, S.
• Gustafsson, F. P.
• Isaev, T. A.
• Koszorús, Á.
• Neyens, G.
• Perrett, H. A.
• Ricketts, C. M.
• Rothe, S.
• Schweikhard, L.
• Vernon, A. R.
• Wendt, K. D. A.
• Wienholtz, F.
• Wilkins, S. G.
• Yang, X. F.

Titel

Spectroscopy of short-lived radioactive molecules

Ist Teil von

• Nature (London), 2020-05, Vol.581 (7809), p.396-400

Ort / Verlag

London: Nature Publishing Group UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Molecular spectroscopy offers opportunities for the exploration of the fundamental laws of nature and the search for new particle physics beyond the standard model 1 – 4 . Radioactive molecules—in which one or more of the atoms possesses a radioactive nucleus—can contain heavy and deformed nuclei, offering high sensitivity for investigating parity- and time-reversal-violation effects 5 , 6 . Radium monofluoride, RaF, is of particular interest because it is predicted to have an electronic structure appropriate for laser cooling 6 , thus paving the way for its use in high-precision spectroscopic studies. Furthermore, the effects of symmetry-violating nuclear moments are strongly enhanced 5 , 7 – 9 in molecules containing octupole-deformed radium isotopes 10 , 11 . However, the study of RaF has been impeded by the lack of stable isotopes of radium. Here we present an experimental approach to studying short-lived radioactive molecules, which allows us to measure molecules with lifetimes of just tens of milliseconds. Energetically low-lying electronic states were measured for different isotopically pure RaF molecules using collinear resonance ionisation at the ISOLDE ion-beam facility at CERN. Our results provide evidence of the existence of a suitable laser-cooling scheme for these molecules and represent a key step towards high-precision studies in these systems. Our findings will enable further studies of short-lived radioactive molecules for fundamental physics research. Measurements of low-energy electronic states of radium monofluoride validate predictions of the use of this short-lived radioactive molecule in exploring fundamental physics and provide evidence of its suitability for laser cooling.