Speaker
Description
The application of quantum-logic techniques to the spectroscopy of trapped atomic ions has enabled the determination of atomic properties at unprecedented levels of precision. Molecules have been proposed as suitable candidates for testing possible time-variation of fundamental constants, e.g. $\frac{m_p}{m_e}$ - ratio, and as long-coherence-time qubits. Our efforts focus on N$_2^+$ which has recently been identified as a promising candidate system for precision spectroscopy. We are currently establishing a complete toolbox for high-precision spectroscopy of single molecules using quantum-logic methods, their initialisation, coherent manipulation and non-destructive interrogation by coupling them to a co-trapped single atomic ion. We have laid the experimental and theoretical foundations for hyperfine-state initialisation of the molecular ions and addressing the suitable extremely narrow infrared transitions.
