This was a contributed talk at the 77th International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy (ISMS) which happened at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June 17 – 21, 2024. This talk was 15 minutes in length followed by 3 minutes of questions. Our group and Xing Wu’s group in particular was invited to submit abstracts for the Heavy Element Spectroscopy Mini-symposium by session organizers Michael Heaven and Lan Cheng. This was my first conference talk as a graduate student and my first foray into the world of molecular spectroscopy, since my research work is primarily focused on the design of our ion source while Nick Nusgart focuses more on how the molecular spectroscopy might change when embedded in a solid (see EDM3 for a refresher). For this talk, I spoke about our plan to use electrospray ionization to efficiently form radioactive molecules and I tried to tailor the context to an audience that would not be familiar with electric dipole moment or nuclear Schiff moment searches.
While I was at ISMS, I learned a lot about the fundamentals of molecular spectroscopy and also attended several interesting talks. I will highlight several talks I enjoyed in a list below:
- Precision Measurements of Molecular Ions In A Ring Trap – A New Approach For Tests Of Fundamental Symmetries (Yan Zhou, Contributed Talk). I thought Yan Zhou’s approach is a good adaptation of the JILA ion trap technique for the electron’s permanent electric dipole moment.
- Identifying Unknown Spectral Lines In JWST Exoplanet Spectra (Laura McKemmish, Contributed Talk). I found this talk interesting because I did not realize that JWST could be used to pick out molecules which are considered significant for biological life (at least, for life on Earth).
- Possibilities Of Investigating Electronic Structure And Chemical Reactivities Of Actinide Molecular Ions Using State-Of-The-Art AMO Physics Technologies (Yan Zhou, Contributed Talk). I enjoyed Yan’s summary of his labs current AMO techniques and a discussion on how they could be adapted for heavy element spectroscopy.
- Laser Spectroscopy Of Coinage-Metal Carbides For Optical Cycling, Quantum Control, And Catalytic Insights (Benjamin Augenbraun, Contributed Talk). I loved this talk and it got me very excited to see what Ben Augenbraun’s group will be working on in the coming years. Personally, I feel that its extremely important to have a dedicated group looking at different molecules that could be laser cooled and trapped for fundamental symmetry experiments.
– Aiden Boyer