Measurement of the variation of electron-to-proton mass ratio using ultracold molecules produced from laser-cooled atoms

Abstract

Experimental techniques to manipulate cold molecules have seen great development in recent years. The precision measurements of cold molecules are expected to give insights into fundamental physics. We use a rovibrationally pure sample of ultracold KRb molecules to improve the measurement on the stability of electron-to-proton mass ratio ($\mu =\frac{m_{\mathrm{e}}}{M_{\mathrm{p}}}$). The measurement is based upon a large sensitivity coefficient of the molecular spectroscopy, which utilizes a transition between nearly a degenerate pair of vibrational levels each associated with a different electronic potential. Observed limit on temporal variation of $\mu$ is $\frac{1}{\mu }\frac{d\mu }{dt}=(0.30\pm 1.0)\times 10^{-14}$ year${}^{-1}$, which is better by a factor of five compared with the most stringent laboratory molecular limits to date. Further improvements should be straightforward, because our measurement was only limited by statistical errors.

10 pages, 4 figures