Speaker
Description
After the theoretical prediction of Radium monofluoride (RaF) as laser-coolable molecule and a versatile probe of fundamental physics [1] the first spectroscopic identification and characterization was achieved at ISOLDE [2]. This experiment paved the way to study the nuclear structure of short lived Radium isotopes in molecular systems and presented a first step in the effort to search for violations of fundamental symmetries [3]. In these neutralisation-reionisation
experiments a three color laser excitation scheme is used to reduce background to enable measurements of high resolution spectra. So far, however, the character of the intermediate states from which ionization takes place is not established. Furthermore, at the present stage of experiments RaF molecules are rather hot having several vibrational levels occupied. This makes interpretations of rovibrational spectra complicated and would limit the efficiency of laser-cooling
schemes.
In this contribution we study energetically high lying excited electronic states of RaF on the level of relativistic Fock-space coupled cluster calculations. Furthermore, we consider ionic states to explore possibilities for reducing the translational and vibrational energy of RaF molecules.
[1] T.A. Isaev et. al., Phys. Rev. A 82, 052521 (2010); T. A. Isaev et. al., arXiv:1310.1511
[physics.chem-ph] (2013); T. A. Isaev, R. Berger, arXiv:1302.5682 [physics.chem-ph] (2013).
[2] R. F. Garcia Ruiz et. al., Nature (London) 581, 396 (2020).
[3] S. Udrescu et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 033001 (2021).
