Sensitivity to a possible variation of the Proton-to-Electron Mass Ratio of Torsion-Wagging-Rotation Transitions in Methylamine (CH3NH2)

TL;DR

This study calculates how sensitive methylamine's torsion-wagging-rotation transitions are to potential variations in the proton-to-electron mass ratio, revealing significant sensitivity enhancements and providing constraints from astronomical observations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining an effective Hamiltonian with high-barrier tunneling formalism to evaluate bc-dependence in methylamine transitions, validated with spectroscopic data.

Findings

Sensitivity coefficients range from -19 to +24.

Observed transitions yield an upper limit of bc/b < 9  10^{-6}.

Significant energy cancellations enhance sensitivity coefficients.

Abstract

We determine the sensitivity to a possible variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio \mu for torsion-wagging-rotation transitions in the ground state of methylamine (CH3NH2). Our calculation uses an effective Hamiltonian based on a high-barrier tunneling formalism combined with extended-group ideas. The \mu-dependence of the molecular parameters that are used in this model are derived and the most important ones of these are validated using the spectroscopic data of different isotopologues of methylamine. We find a significant enhancement of the sensitivity coefficients due to energy cancellations between internal rotational, overall rotational and inversion energy splittings. The sensitivity coefficients of the different transitions range from -19 to +24. The sensitivity coefficients of the 78.135, 79.008, and 89.956 GHz transitions that were recently observed in the disk of a z = 0.89 spiral galaxy located in front of the quasar PKS 1830-211 [S. Muller et al. Astron. Astrophys. 535, A103 (2011)] were calculated to be -0.87 for the first two and -1.4 for the third transition, respectively. From these transitions a preliminary upper limit for a variation of the proton to electron mass ratio of \Delta \mu/\mu< 9 x 10^{-6} is deduced.