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High-resolution mid-infrared spectroscopy of buffer-gas-cooled methyltrioxorhenium molecules

Atomic Physics 2017-09-07 v1 Chemical Physics

Abstract

We demonstrate cryogenic buffer-gas cooling of gas-phase methyltrioxorhenium (MTO). This molecule is closely related to chiral organometallic molecules where the parity-violating energy differences between enantiomers may be measurable. The molecules are produced with a rotational temperature of approximately 6~K by laser ablation of an MTO pellet inside a cryogenic helium buffer gas cell. Facilitated by the low temperature, we demonstrate absorption spectroscopy of the 10.2~μ\mum antisymmetric Re=O stretching mode of MTO with a resolution of 8~MHz and a frequency accuracy of 30~MHz. We partially resolve the hyperfine structure and measure the nuclear quadrupole coupling of the excited vibrational state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.08741,
  title  = {High-resolution mid-infrared spectroscopy of buffer-gas-cooled methyltrioxorhenium molecules},
  author = {Sean Tokunaga and R. J. Hendricks and M. Tarbutt and B Darquié},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.08741},
  year   = {2017}
}