Chiral Molecules as Sensitive Probes for Direct Detection of P -Odd Cosmic Fields

Abstract

Potential advantages of chiral molecules for a sensitive search for parity violating cosmic fields are highlighted. Such fields are invoked in different models for cold dark matter or in the Lorentz-invariance violating standard model extensions and thus are signatures of physics beyond the standard model. The sensitivity of a 20-year-old experiment with the molecule CHBrClF to pseudovector cosmic fields as characterized by the parameter jb e 0 j is estimated to be Oð10 −12 GeVÞ employing ab initio calculations. This allows us to project the sensitivity of future experiments with favorable choices of chiral heavy-elemental molecular probes to be Oð10 −17 GeVÞ, which will be an improvement of the present best limits by at least two orders of magnitude.

Observation and laser spectroscopy of ytterbium monomethoxide, YbOCH$_3$

“…Future measurements with hyperfine resolution will be required to determine the exact splittings. Alternatively, chiral variants such as YbOCHDT may be useful for studies of parity violation arising from P -odd cosmic fields, e.g., in searches for axion-like particles [80,81]. Chiral species are predicted to be particularly sensitive to oscillating pseudovector fields that cannot be easily probed in existing spin-precession experiments [80].…”

“…Alternatively, chiral variants such as YbOCHDT may be useful for studies of parity violation arising from P -odd cosmic fields, e.g., in searches for axion-like particles [80,81]. Chiral species are predicted to be particularly sensitive to oscillating pseudovector fields that cannot be easily probed in existing spin-precession experiments [80]. Because such effects scale rapidly with Z [81], YbOCHDT may provide orders-of-magnitude increased sensitivity over previously considered chiral probes.…”

Machine Learning‐Based Optimization of Chiral Photonic Nanostructures: Evolution‐ and Neural Network‐Based Designs

“…Recently, studies involving systems with polarization‐sensitive light–matter interactions, such as with chiral molecules [ 29–32 ] or some of the popular valleytronic 2D materials, [ 33,34 ] increased the demand for chiral photonics. Different concepts were under investigation in the past decade to address chirality of light, typically making use of chiral optical metamaterials of dielectric or metallic character that rely on nanostructuring materials.…”

Axion-mediated electron-electron interaction in ytterbium monohydroxide molecule

“…One of the techniques to search for ALPs in laboratory tabletop experiments with atoms and molecules is based on measurements of oscillating atomic and molecular electric dipole moments (EDM) arising due to the interaction with the oscillating ALP field [24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. The frequency of oscillations is determined by the ALP mass and the amplitude is proportional to √ ρ, where ρ is the ALP density [25,31].…”