Our research focuses on studying the atomic nucleus through its effects on the electron shell of short-lived atoms and molecules. Utilizing electronic orbitals that deeply penetrate the nucleus, combined with entangled states (so-called “quantum sensors”) of single molecules in ion traps, allows for the measurement of fundamental effects of the Standard Model of Particle Physics and beyond.

In particular, we probe unstudied effects of the nuclear electroweak structure that violate one of the three fundamental symmetries of Nature, the parity (mirror) symmetry. One of such effects is the nuclear anapole moment, which is expected to induce large (~Hz-kHz) shifts to the electronic energy levels precisely probed with lasers. These shifts can be caused by new fundamental particles that mediate so-called dark matter/energy, the majority of matter and energy in the Universe and one of the big open questions in physics. Moreover, understanding these parity-violating effects is the necessary step prior to studying nuclear electric dipole moments (EDM), a time-symmetry violating effect orders of magnitudes larger than its electron EDM counterpart. This effect could explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry puzzle, the big open question in physics around the fact that we see more matter than antimatter in the Universe, i.e., the question how we can even exist in the framework of the Big Bang Theory.

Together with our collaborators, we conduct precision laser spectroscopy and ion trapping experiments at the U.S. Facility for Rare Isotope Beams accelerator facility and the European counterpart at CERN/ISOLDE. As part of the NEPTUNE collaboration, a development platform for quantum sensing measurements on stable molecules is under commissioning at the Garcia Ruiz Lab at MIT, and a dedicated facility for quantum sensing of radioactive molecules is underway at the Karthein Lab at the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University. 

Moreover, the Karthein Lab develops ultra-sensitive laser spectroscopy techniques in ion traps to study the electronic structure of molecular ions that are produced at minuscular quantities, such as artificially created radioactive molecules with high sensitivity to symmetry-violating nuclear effects. This research has broad implications beyond the fields of nuclear, atomic, molecular, and optical physics into quantum chemistry, astrophysics of cold molecular clouds, and medical isotopes for cancer treatment.