Calculation of parity-nonconserving optical rotation in iodine at 1315 nm

We examine the feasibility of a parity nonconserving (PNC) optical rotation experiment for the P3/2 → P1/2 transition of atomic iodine at 1315 nm. The calculated E1PNC to M1 amplitude ratio is R = 0.80(16) × 10−8. We show that very large PNC rotations (greater than 10 μrad) are obtained for iodine-atom column densities of ∼1022 cm−2, which can be produced by increasing the effective interaction path length by a factor of ∼104 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.