Axion-mediated electron-electron interaction in ytterbium monohydroxide molecule

TL;DR

This paper investigates axion-mediated electron-electron interactions in YbOH molecules, proposing that such effects could be measured experimentally to improve constraints on CP-violating electron-axion couplings.

Contribution

It introduces a calculation of a molecular constant for axion-mediated electron-electron interaction in YbOH, highlighting its potential for experimental detection.

Findings

Molecular constant for axion-mediated electron-electron interaction is comparable to electron-nucleus interaction.

YbOH experiments could set new limits on CP-violating electron-axion couplings.

Estimated effects are within measurable range for future experiments.

Abstract

The YbOH triatomic molecule can be efficiently used to measure the electron electric dipole moment, which violates time-reversal (T) and spatial parity (P) symmetries of fundamental interactions [I. Kozyryev, N.R. Hutzler, Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 133002 (2017)]. We study another mechanism of the T,P-violation in the YbOH molecule - the electron-electron interaction mediated by the low-mass axiolike particle. For this, we calculate the molecular constant that characterizes this interaction and use it to estimate the expected magnitude of the effect to be measured. It is shown that this molecular constant has the same order of magnitude as the corresponding molecular constant corresponding to the axion-mediated electron-nucleus interaction. According to our estimation, an experiment on YbOH will allow one to set updated laboratory constraints on the CP-violating electron-axion coupling constants.