English

Rotational-hyperfine cooling of $^{205}$TlF in a cryogenic beam

Atomic Physics 2025-06-18 v2

Abstract

The aim of CeNTREX (Cold Molecule Nuclear Time-Reversal Experiment) is to search for time-reversal symmetry violation in the thallium nucleus, by measuring the Schiff moment of 205^{205}Tl in the polar molecule thallium fluoride (TlF). CeNTREX uses a cryogenic beam of TlF with a rotational temperature of 6.3(2) K. This results in population spread over dozens of rotational and hyperfine sublevels of TlF, while only a single level is useful for the Schiff moment measurement. Here we present a protocol for cooling the rotational and hyperfine degrees of freedom in the CeNTREX beam, transferring the majority of the Boltzmann distribution into a single rotational and hyperfine sublevel by using a single ultraviolet laser and a pair of microwave beams. We achieve a factor of 20.1(4)20.1(4) gain in the population of the J=0J=0, F=0F=0 hyperfine sublevel of the TlF ground state.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.05578,
  title  = {Rotational-hyperfine cooling of $^{205}$TlF in a cryogenic beam},
  author = {Olivier Grasdijk and David DeMille and Jakob Kastelic and David Kawall and Steve Lamoreaux and Oskari Timgren and Konrad Wenz and Tanya Zelevinsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.05578},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

9 pages, 7 figures