| Abstract: | The weak force in the standard model is predicted to cause variations between the spectra of left and right-handed
chiral molecules. Our group's goal is to measure this shift, also termed parity violation (PV) which has never been
measured directly in molecules. This PV shift in IR vibrational excitations is predicted to be as high as a few Hz at
best, so measuring it requires cold chiral molecules. Molecular ions were chosen because they can be easily trapped
and cooled for long time periods.
Cooling chiral molecules directly is challenging, so we co-trap and directly cool simpler ions (Yb+), that cool the
molecule via collisions – a process known as sympathetically cooling. Our PV detecting scheme relies on photodissociation of the molecule, so performing the measurement repeatedly requires reloading new cold molecules
every time. The goal of this research is to optimize the cooling rate with respect to the coherence time (≲0.5s), to
reduce the dead time in each repetition.
I will discussresults of trapping & cooling processes from many body simulations that include Coulomb interactions.
The main parameters of the simulations are the initial temperature, the LASER cooling parameters and the trap’s
secular frequencies. We find that higher secular frequencies have proven to increase the cooling rate – something
that can be done experimentally thanks to our ion trap’s unique design. Lastly, I’ll discuss efforts to establish
propensity rules for the cooling rate, as opposed to existing sophisticated collision rate models |