Laser Cooling Radium Containing Molecules for Fundamental Physics

Foundational cosmological mysteries, such as the matter-antimatter asymmetry and the microscopic nature of dark matter, motivate searches for new particles and forces that violate fundamental symmetries of parity (P) and time-reversal (T) In the RaX collaboration, we harness radioactive molecules, RaF and RaOH, as quantum sensors with long coherence times and enhanced sensitivities to P and T violation (PTV). This sensitivity is arises from the octupole deformation of the heavy radium nucleus in a polar molecule with large internal fields, amplifying the signatures of nuclear PTV by >10⁶ compared to measurements in atoms containing spherical nuclei (e.g. ¹⁹⁹Hg). Using laser cooling and trapping to achieve long coherence times, these radioactive molecules can potentially probe new hadronic PTV physics into PeV energy scales. In this talk, I will present our progress on producing cold beams of ²²⁶RaX and demonstrating laser cooling, key milestones toward next generation searches for new physics.