Investigation of parity violation in nuclear spin-rotation interaction of fluorooxirane

Abstract

When it comes to the question of how signatures from parity violation in chiral molecules can be revealed, then ultra-high resolution spectroscopy techniques play a crucial role in attempts to detect such effects via line shifts. A prerequisite for this approach towards molecular parity violation is a detailed understanding of the corresponding conventional spectroscopy, including even small effects that are often neglected. Nuclear spin-rotation (NSR) interaction is one such effect that becomes appreciable only at high to ultra-high resolution and is often masked by nuclear electric quadrupole interactions (NQI) if nuclei are present with nuclear spin quantum number I larger than 1/2. Herein, NSR interactions are studied theoretically for the chiral molecules fluorooxirane and bromochlorofluoromethane (CHBrClF). For the latter molecule, NSR interactions are compared to nuclear electric quadrupole coupling contributions. The former molecule is devoid of I > 1/2 nuclei such that NSR interactions are not masked by NQI. Parity-odd contributions to NSR of 19F are computed that give rise to additional line shifts in hyperfine transitions. A detection of these nuclear spin-dependent P-odd terms could in principle give information on the nuclear anapole moment in fluorine, which arises due to parity violating interactions within the nucleus.