Molecular quantum rotors in gyroscopic motion with a nonspreading rotational wavepacket

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to generate and observe molecular quantum gyroscopic motion using nonspreading rotational wavepackets, enabling long-lasting synchronized gyroscopic motion in ionic molecules for potential measurement applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to produce and detect molecular quantum gyroscopic motion with nonspreading wavepackets in ionic molecules, a new way to measure molecular g factors.

Findings

Long-lived synchronized gyroscopic motion demonstrated in ionic molecules.

Proposed Coulomb-explosion technique for observing the gyroscopic motion.

Potential application in measuring molecular rotational g factors.

Abstract

We provide a way of generating and observing molecular quantum gyroscopic motion that resembles gyroscopic motion of classical rotors. After producing a nonspreading rotational wavepacket called a cogwheel state, one can generate a gyroscopic precession motion by applying an external magnetic field interacting through a rotational magnetic dipole moment. The quantum rotors, realized with linear nonparamagnetic ionic molecules trapped in an ion trap, can keep their gyroscopic motion for a long time in a collectively synchronized fashion. A Coulomb-explosion technique is suggested to observe the gyroscopic motion. Despite limited molecular species, the observation of the gyroscopic motion can be adopted as a method to measure rotational g factors of molecules.