We examine the feasibility of a parity non-conserving (PNC) optical rotation experiment for the $^2$P$_{ 3/2}\rightarrow ^2$P$_{ 1/2}$ transition of atomic iodine at 1315 nm. The calculated $E1_{ \rm PNC}$ to $M1$ amplitude ratio is $R=0.80(16)\times 10^{ -8}$. We show that very large PNC rotations (greater than 10 $\mu$rad) are obtained for iodine-atom column densities of $\sim 10^{ 22}$ cm$^{ -2}$, which can be produced by increasing the effective interaction pathlength by a factor of $\sim 10^4$ with a high-finesse optical cavity. The simulated signals indicate that measurement of the nuclear anapole moment is feasible, and that a 1% PNC precision measurement should resolve the inconsistency between previous measurements in Cs and Tl.
Categories: physics.atom-ph nucl-th