English

High sensitivity to mass-ratio variation in deep molecular potentials

Atomic Physics 2016-11-15 v1

Abstract

Molecular vibrational transitions are prime candidates for model-independent searches for variation of the proton-to-electron mass ratio. Searches for present-day variation achieve highest sensitivity with deep molecular potentials. We identify several high-sensitivity transitions in the deeply bound O2+{\rm O}_2^+ molecular ion. These transitions are electric-dipole forbidden and thus have narrow linewidths. The most sensitive transitions take advantage of an accidental degeneracy between vibrational states in different electronic potentials. We suggest experimentally feasible routes to a measurement with uncertainty exceeding current limits on present-day variation in mp/mem_p/m_e.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.06825,
  title  = {High sensitivity to mass-ratio variation in deep molecular potentials},
  author = {D. Hanneke and R. A. Carollo and D. A. Lane},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.06825},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T15:02:03.807Z