Laser-coolable polyatomic molecules with heavy nuclei

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of laser-coolable heavy polyatomic molecules, especially radium monohydroxide (RaOH), for advanced scientific applications including precision measurements and fundamental physics tests.

Contribution

It highlights RaOH as the heaviest polyatomic molecule suitable for laser cooling, emphasizing its suitability for exploring new physics and applications in quantum science.

Findings

RaOH is the heaviest polyatomic molecule proposed for laser cooling.

RaOH offers extensive possibilities for searching P-odd and P,T-odd effects.

Polyatomic molecules with heavy nuclei are promising for high-precision experiments.

Abstract

Recently a number of diatomic and polyatomics molecules has been identified as a prospective systems for Doppler/Sisyphus cooling. Doppler/Sisyphus cooling allows to decrease the kinetic energy of molecules down to microkelvin temperatures with high efficiency and then capture them to molecular traps, including magneto-optical trap. Trapped molecules can be used for creation of molecular fountains and/or performing controlled chemical reactions, high-precision spectra measurements and a multitude of other applications. Polyatomic molecules with heavy nuclei present considerable interest for the search for "new physics" outside of Standard Model and other applications including cold chemistry, photochemistry, quantum informatics etc. Herein we would like to attract attention to radium monohydroxide molecule (RaOH) which is on the one hand an amenable object for laser cooling and on the other hand provides extensive possibilities for searching for P-odd and P,T-odd effects. At the moment RaOH is the heaviest polyatomic molecule proposed for direct cooling with lasers.