Production and spectroscopy of cold radioactive molecules in a tabletop apparatus

Molecules containing radioactive nuclei are being pursued for a wide range of applications, from fundamental symmetries to nuclear astrophysics. However, their study is made challenging by the combination of limited quantity and the difficulty of working with even the simplest molecules. Here I will describe the production and spectroscopy of cold, stopped 226RaOH, 226RaOD, and 226RaF in a tabletop apparatus. By combining novel target production methods, cryogenic buffer gas cooling, optically driven resonant chemical production, and bandwidth-tunable low-background spectroscopy methods, we can rapidly scan a wide range and then narrow in on molecular features to perform high resolution spectroscopy with trace quantities of material. Radium-containing molecules have extremely high sensitivity to CP-violating physics and are amenable to laser cooling and trapping for advanced quantum control; since the molecules that we create are in the same starting condition as current molecular laser cooling experiments, this opens a new path for quantum sensing of exotic nuclei. Furthermore, the production and spectroscopy approaches are generic and can be applied to a wide range of species.