A new experiment to measure parity violation in trapped chiral molecular ions

The weak force is predicted to give rise to slightly different structures for left and right-handed chiral molecules, contrary to the common conception that enantiomers are perfect mirror images. The consequences of the asymmetry range from the elimination of tunnelling between enantiomers to a possible seed of the chiral preference exhibited in the chemistry of life. We are building a new experiment aimed at observing weak force parity violation (PV) in molecules for the first time. We will use the charged version of chiral molecules which can be easily trapped providing long interrogation times. Toward our goal we have developed a scheme that uses the principles of 3-wave mixing to differentially extract the PV signature from a racemic sample [1]. Molecular ions also provide a pathway to create chiral molecules that are internally cold, populating few quantum states. I will describe our plan to achieve this through state-selective ionization. Finally, I will discuss our chiral molecular ion candidates as well as our plan to detect their internal state populations with an ion trap and Velocity Map Imaging combination. References [1] Itay Erez, Eliana Ruth Wallach and Yuval Shagam arXiv:2206.03699 (2022)