Laser-coolable AcOH+ ion for CP -violation searches

Abstract

The ${\mathrm{AcOH}}^{+}$ molecular ion is identified as a prospective system to search for $\mathcal{CP}$-violation effects. According to our study ${\mathrm{AcOH}}^{+}$ belongs to the class of laser-coolable polyatomic molecular cations implying a large coherence time in the experiments to study symmetry-violating effects of fundamental interactions. We perform both nuclear and high-level relativistic coupled cluster electronic structure calculations to express the experimentally measurable $\mathcal{T},\mathcal{P}$-violating energy shift in terms of fundamental quantities such as the nuclear magnetic quadrupole moment (MQM), electron electric dipole moment ($e\mathrm{EDM}$) and dimensionless scalar-pseudoscalar nuclear-electron interaction constant. We further express nuclear MQM in terms of the strength constants of $\mathcal{CP}$-violating nuclear forces: quantum chromodynamics vacuum angle $\overline{\ensuremath{\theta}}$ and quark chromo-EDMs. The equilibrium structure of ${\mathrm{AcOH}}^{+}$ in the ground and the four lowest excited electronic states was found to be linear. The calculated Franck-Condon factors and transition dipole moments indicate that the laser cooling using an optical cycle involving the first excited state is possible for the trapped ${\mathrm{AcOH}}^{+}$ ions with the Doppler limit estimated to be $\ensuremath{\sim}$4 nK. The lifetime of the ($0,{1}^{1},0$) excited vibrational state considered as a working one for MQM and $e\mathrm{EDM}$ search experiments is estimated to be $\ensuremath{\sim}0.4$ s.