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arXiv · 2202.01346

Spectroscopy on the eEDM-sensitive states of ThF$^+$

Kia Boon Ng·Yan Zhou·Lan Cheng·Noah Schlossberger·Sun Yool Park·Tanya S. Roussy·Luke Caldwell·Yuval Shagam·Antonio J. Vigil·Eric A. Cornell·Jun Ye
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Abstract

An excellent candidate molecule for the measurement of the electron's electric dipole moment (eEDM) is thorium monofluoride (ThF$^+$) because the eEDM-sensitive state, $^3Δ_1$, is the electronic ground state, and thus is immune to decoherence from spontaneous decay. We perform spectroscopy on $X\,^3Δ_1$ to extract three spectroscopic constants crucial to the eEDM experiment: the hyperfine coupling constant, the molecular frame electric dipole moment, and the magnetic $g$-factor. To understand the impact of thermal blackbody radiation on the vibrational ground state, we study the lifetime of the first excited vibrational manifold of $X\,^3Δ_1$. We perform ab initio calculations, compare them to our results, and discuss prospects for using ThF$^+$ in a new eEDM experiment at JILA.

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Kia Boon Ng, Yan Zhou, Lan Cheng, Noah Schlossberger, Sun Yool Park, Tanya S. Roussy, Luke Caldwell, Yuval Shagam, Antonio J. Vigil, Eric A. Cornell, Jun Ye. 2022-02-03. Spectroscopy on the eEDM-sensitive states of ThF$^+$. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.105.022823

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