Lorentz and CPT violation and the hydrogen and antihydrogen molecular ions I -- rovibrational states

Abstract

The extremely narrow natural linewidths of rovibrational energy levels in the molecular hydrogen ion ${\text{H}}_2^{+}$, and the prospect of synthesising its antimatter counterpart ${\overline{\text{H}}}_2^{-}$, 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 $10^{17}$, rovibrational transitions have an enhanced sensitivity to Lorentz and CPT violation of $O(m_p/m_e)$ in the proton (hadron) sector compared to atomic transitions.

Comments: 55 pages, 9 figures