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

Nuclear-spin-dependent parity violation (NSD-PV) effects in atoms and molecules arise from Z⁰ 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 ¹³⁸Ba¹⁹F. Our sensitivity surpasses that of any previous atomic parity violation measurement. We show that systematic errors can be suppressed to at least the level of the present statistical sensitivity. We measure the matrix element W of the NSD-PV interaction with total uncertainty δW/(2π)<0.7 Hz, for each of two configurations where W must have different signs. This sensitivity would be sufficient to measure NSD-PV effects of the size anticipated across a wide range of nuclei including ¹³⁷Ba in ¹³⁷BaF, where |W|/(2π)≈5 Hz is expected.