Project Grant 2207623

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program provides $561,095 to Amherst College from July 15, 2022 to June 30, 2025. The funding supports research to demonstrate the use of molecular vibrations as precise frequency references, or optical molecular clocks, for searches of new physics. Specifically, the award enables investigation of laser-driven vibrational transitions in molecular ions of oxygen. Trapping the molecular ions will allow long probe times needed to precisely determine transition frequencies and conduct a proof-of-principle search for variation in the proton-to-electron mass ratio. Undergraduate students are involved in all aspects of the work, advancing their scientific training. If successful, molecular vibrations could enable next-generation searches for drifts or oscillations in fundamental constants, probing additional dimensions, new scalar fields, and ultralight dark matter.