Improved Ionization and Dissociation Energies of the Deuterium Molecule

Abstract

The ionization energy of D${}_2$ has been determined experimentally from measurements involving two-photon Doppler-free vacuum-ultraviolet pulsed laser excitation and near-infrared continuous-wave laser excitation to yield $E_{\mathrm{I}}({\mathrm{D}}_2)=124745.393739(26)$ \wn. From this value, the dissociation energy of D${}_2$ is deduced to be $D_0$(D${}_2$) = 36\,748.362\,282(26) \wn, representing a 25-fold improvement over previous values, and found in good agreement (at $1.6\sigma$) with recent ab initio calculations of the 4-particle nonadiabatic relativistic energy and of quantum-electrodynamic corrections up to order $m{\alpha }^6$. This result constitutes a test of quantum electrodynamics in the molecular domain, while a perspective is opened to determine nuclear charge radii from molecules.

9 pages, 6 figures, Phys. Rev. A, accepted

References in corpus (5)

• Proton-Electron Mass Ratio from Laser Spectroscopy of HD${}^{+}$ at the Part-Per-Trillion Level
• Benchmarking theory with an improved measurement of the ionization and dissociation energies of H${}_2$
• Trapping, cooling, and photodissociation analysis of state-selected H$\_2^{+}$ ions produced by (3+1) multiphoton ionization
• Hyperfine components of all rovibrational quadrupole transitions in the H${}_2$ and D${}_2$ molecules
• Chirp-compensated pulsed titanium-sapphire laser system for precision spectroscopy