High-sensitivity molecular spectroscopy of SrOH using magneto-optical trapping

Abstract

Polyatomic molecules are projected to be powerful tools in searches for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM), including new CP-violating (CPV) interactions and ultralight dark matter (UDM) particles. Certain degrees of freedom present in polyatomic molecules enhance the sensitivity of these searches, as well as reject systematic errors, but necessitate extensive high-precision spectroscopy to identify pathways for optical cycling and quantum state readout. Here we show how a magneto-optical trap (MOT) can be used to locate weak optical transitions and identify rovibronic states for optical cycling and quantum control. We demonstrate this spectroscopic approach with strontium monohydroxide (SrOH), which is a candidate for both CPV and UDM searches. We identify two new repumping transitions in SrOH and implement them in a deeper optical cycle to achieve 32400(4700) trapped molecules, a 4.5-fold increase over the previous, shallower cycle. In addition, we determine the energy spacing between the $X^2{\Sigma }^{+}(200)$ and $X^2{\Sigma }^{+}(03^{1}0)$ vibrational manifolds of SrOH, confirming the existence of numerous low-frequency rovibrational transitions that are sensitive to temporal variations of the proton-to-electron mass ratio, a predicted effect of the existence of UDM.

References in corpus (25)

• Quantum computation with trapped polar molecules
• A toolbox for lattice spin models with polar molecules
• A new bound on the electron's electric dipole moment
• Precision Measurement of Time-Reversal Symmetry Violation with Laser-Cooled Polyatomic Molecules
• Sisyphus Laser Cooling of a Polyatomic Molecule
• Building one molecule from a reservoir of two atoms
• Lasercooled RaF as a promising candidate to measure molecular parity violation
• Dipolar Exchange Quantum Logic Gate with Polar Molecules
• Quantum Magnetism with Polar Alkali Dimers
• Optoelectrical cooling of polar molecules to sub-millikelvin temperatures
• Ultracold polar molecules as qudits
• Laser-Cooled Polyatomic Molecules for Improved Electron Electric Dipole Moment Searches
• Probing site-resolved correlations in a spin system of ultracold molecules
• Precision frequency measurement of visible intercombination lines of strontium
• Characteristics of a magneto-optical trap of molecules
• Enhanced Sensitivity to Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter in the Spectra of the Linear Radical SrOH
• Measurement of the variation of electron-to-proton mass ratio using ultracold molecules produced from laser-cooled atoms
• Polarization Enhanced Deep Optical Dipole Trapping of $\Lambda$-cooled Polar Molecules
• Blue-Detuned Magneto-Optical Trap of Molecules
• Sub-millisecond Entanglement and iSWAP Gate between Molecular Qubits
• Three-dimensional Magneto-optical Trapping of Barium Monofluoride
• Nuclear spin-dependent parity-violating effects in light polyatomic molecules
• Two-axis twisting using Floquet-engineered XYZ spin models with polar molecules
• Magneto-optical trapping of a heavy polyatomic molecule for precision measurement
• $\mathcal{C}\mathcal{P}$-violation sensitivity of closed-shell radium-containing polyatomic molecular ions