Demonstration of a Sensitive Method to Measure Nuclear Spin-Dependent Parity Violation

Understand

Nuclear spin-dependent parity violation (NSD-PV) effects in atoms and molecules arise from $Z^0$ boson exchange between electrons and the nucleus, and from the magnetic interaction between electrons and the parity-violating nuclear anapole moment.

• We demonstrate measurements of NSD-PV that use an enhancement of the effect in diatomic molecules, here using the test system $^{138}$Ba$^{19}$F.
• Our sensitivity surpasses that of any previous atomic PV measurement.
• We show that systematic errors can be suppressed to at least the level of the present statistical sensitivity.