Relativistic study of the nuclear anapole moment effects in diatomic molecules

TL;DR

This paper investigates nuclear-spin-dependent parity violation effects in diatomic molecules using relativistic quantum methods, identifying promising candidates for measuring the nuclear anapole moment in heavy elements.

Contribution

It provides improved calculations and new candidate molecules for nuclear anapole moment measurements using relativistic electronic structure methods.

Findings

Heavy diatomic molecules are suitable for nuclear anapole moment detection.

Enhanced computational results for previously studied molecules.

Identification of new promising candidates for experiments.

Abstract

Nuclear-spin-dependent (NSD) parity violating effects are studied for a number of diatomic molecules using relativistic Hartree-Fock and density functional theory and accounting for core polarization effects. Heavy diatomic molecules are good candidates for the successful measurement of the nuclear anapole moment, which is the dominant NSD parity violation term in heavy elements. Improved results for the molecules studied in our previous publication [Borschevsky et al., Phys. Rev. A 85, 052509 (2012)] are presented along with the calculations for a number of new promising candidates for the nuclear anapole measurements.