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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Full confirmation of icosahedral Bose-Einstein statistics in cold C6012

Ya-Chu Chan1,2, Lee R. Liu1,3,*, Andrew Scheck1,3, David J. Nesbitt1,2,3, Jun Ye1,3,†, and Dina Rosenberg1,3

  • *Contact author: lee.richard.liu@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: ye@jila.colorado.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L032029 – Published 7 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3fjd-lwkd

Abstract

The quantum mechanical nature of high icosahedral symmetry, spherical top molecules, such as C6012, is particularly evident at low total angular momentum quantum number J. However, the small rotational constant of such large molecules leads to the most populated levels having hundreds of rotational quanta even at modest temperatures, making transitions from low-J states challenging to observe. We combine a laser desorption C60 source with helium buffer gas cooling to achieve the lowest temperature of 30 K to date, enabling the observation of R(J<30) in the 8.4µm rovibrational band of C6012. Based on the absence of 15 transitions due to the exchange statistics of 60 identical spin-0 nuclei, we place an upper limit of 1.4(5)×10−8 on possible violations of the Bose-Einstein statistics, offering improvements over previous studies that considered only one missing line in molecular systems with two identical bosonic nuclei (e.g., O216 and C12O216).

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L032029– Published 7 August, 2025
  • Received 19 June 2024
  • Accepted 17 June 2025
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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