Vibrational Spectroscopy of Laser Cooled CaH
Abstract
Cold molecules and molecular ions are leading to a renaissance in the field of molecular spectroscopy just as laser-cooled atoms resulted in a renaissance of atomic physics. Cold molecules enable the performance of spectroscopy with unprecedented precision. Spectroscopy with cold molecules is driven by many of its modern applications such as precision measurements, cold chemistry and quantum information. Molecular ions trapped in RF Paul traps and sympathetically-cooled with laser-cooled atomic ions have been shown to be a great platform to measure spectroscopic transitions lines at a precision beyond traditional methods, where high ion density is necessary but difficult to achieve with the classical preparations. In this thesis, we perform vibrational spectroscopy on the 0 = 10 = 0 and 0 = 9 = 0 overtone of a trapped and sympathetically-cooled 40CaH+ molecular ion using a resonance enhanced two-photon dissociation scheme. Our experiments are motivated by theoretical work that proposes comparing the vibrational overtones of 40CaH+ with electronic transitions in atoms to detect possible time variation of in the mass ratio of the proton-to-electron.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 28, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1038093
Entities
People
- Ncamiso Khanyile
Organizations
- University of California, Los Angeles