2024/12/12 by G.M. Shore, Shore, Graham M.
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Radioactive Decay and Measurement Techniques
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2412.09730
openalex publication_date 2024/12/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The extremely narrow natural linewidths of rovibrational energy levels in the molecular hydrogen ion \textrmH2 +, and the prospect of synthesising its antimatter counterpart \textrmH2 -, make it a promising candidate for high-precision tests of fundamental symmetries such as Lorentz and CPT invariance. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the rovibrational spectrum of the (anti-)hydrogen molecular ion in a low-energy effective theory incorporating Lorentz and CPT violation. The focus is on the spin-independent couplings in this theory, for which the best current bounds come from measurements of the 1S-2S transition in atomic hydrogen and antihydrogen. We show that in addition to the improvement in these bounds from the increased precision of the transition frequencies, potentially reaching 1 part in 1017, rovibrational transitions have an enhanced sensitivity to Lorentz and CPT violation of O(mp/me) in the proton (hadron) sector compared to atomic transitions.