15min:

ANH LE, SARAH FREY AND TIMOTHY C. STEIMLE, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe,AZ 85287.

There is renewed interest in the spectroscopy of heavy metal containing polar radical diatomic molecules because they provide a sensitive venue for detection of parity nonconservation (PNC) either from the determination of the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron, d_e , or detection of the interaction of the anapole moment of the nuclei with the unpaired electron . The effects due to d_e are nuclear spin independent and studies of both the even and odd nuclear spin isotopologues are relevant. Recently, DeMille et al proposed using an odd isotopologue of barium monofluoride, ¹³⁷BaF, to measure the nuclear spin-dependent parity non-conservation (NSD-PNC) effect resulting from the interaction of the anapole moment of ¹³⁷Ba with the unpaired electron of the X^{2 +} electronic state. Here we report on the analysis of the field-free spectrum of the A² -X^{2 +}(0,0) band of ¹³⁷BaF and an analysis of the ¹³⁷Ba(I=3/2) and ¹⁹F(I=1/2) hyperfine interaction in the A² state. The hyperfine interaction in the X^{2 +} state has been previously characterized from the analysis of the pure rotation spectrum. The optimal optical transitions for monitoring ¹³⁷BaF in future PNC measurements will be discussed.