Radium-containing molecular cations amenable for laser cooling

TL;DR

This paper explores radium-containing molecular cations suitable for laser cooling, aiming to facilitate precision spectroscopy and searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Contribution

It identifies and analyzes potential radium-based molecular ions that can be laser cooled, providing their electronic structures and properties for experimental use.

Findings

Identified candidate radium molecular ions suitable for laser cooling

Calculated electronic structures and molecular properties of these ions

Provided insights into their suitability for precision spectroscopy and new physics searches

Abstract

Recently a new wave of interest to spectroscopy of radioactive compounds has raised due to successful applications of the new experimental ISOL/CRIS technique to optical spectroscopy of radium monofluoride molecules. This opens great prospects to searches of the effects connected with ``new physics'' which point on deviations of the physical laws from those established by Standard Model of elementary particles. Considerable advantages in experiments for search for such effects would be provided by the abilities to trap the working molecules, their laser-coolability and presence of co-magnitometer molecular states and also a variety of accessible nuclear isotopes of the elements in the molecule with different nuclear multipole moments. Laser-coolable polyatomic molecular ions containing Ra nuclei shall meet the above criteria and in the present article we are considering a number of prospective molecular ions and calculating their electronic structure and molecular properties.