Alexander V. Oleynichenko

The extension of laser cooling and trapping techniques to polyatomic molecular ions would have advanced scientific applications such as search of physics outside of the Standard Model, ultracold chemistry etc. We apply the Fock space relativistic coupled cluster method to study low-lying electronic states of molecular ions with Ra--N bonds, namely RaNCH$^+$, RaNH$^+_3$ and RaNCCH$^+_3$. Prospects of laser cooling of these species are estimated, and the peculiarities of unpaired-electron distributions are analyzed from the point of view of the molecular electronic structure. RaNH$^+_3$ and RaNCCH$^+_3$ are the first symmetric top molecular ions expected to be suitable for direct laser cooling.

The AcOH${}^+$ molecular ion is identified as a prospective system to search for $\mathcal{CP}$-violation effects. According to our study AcOH${}^+$ belongs to the class of laser-coolable polyatomic molecular cations implying the large coherence time in the experiments to study symmetry violating effects of fundamental interactions. We perform both nuclear and high level relativistic coupled cluster electronic structure calculations to express experimentally measurable $\mathcal{T}$,$\mathcal{P}$-violating energy shift in terms of fundamental quantities such as the nuclear magnetic quadrupole moment (MQM), electron electric dipole moment ($e$EDM) and dimensionless scalar-pseudoscalar nuclear-electron interaction constant. We further express nuclear MQM in terms of the strength constants of $\mathcal{CP}$-violating nuclear forces: quantum chromodynamics vacuum angle $\barθ$ and quark chromo-EDMs. The equilibrium geometry of AcOH${}^+$ in the ground and the four lowest excited electronic states was found to be linear. The calculated Franck-Condon factors and transition dipole moments indicate that the laser cooling using optical cycle involving the first excited state is possible for the trapped AcOH${}^+$ ions with the Doppler limit estimated to be~$\sim 4$~nK. The lifetime of the (0,1$^1$,0) excited vibrational state considered as a working one for MQM and $e$EDM search experiments is estimated to be $\sim 0.4$ sec.