Fundamental transitions and ionization energies of the hydrogen molecular ions at the few ppt level

Abstract

We calculate ionization energies and fundamental vibrational transitions for H$_2^+$, D$_2^+$, and HD$^+$ molecular ions. The NRQED expansion for the energy in terms of the fine structure constant $α$ is used. Previous calculations of orders $mα^6$ and $mα^7$ are improved by including second-order contributions due to the vibrational motion of nuclei. Furthermore, we evaluate the largest corrections at the order $mα^8$. That allows to reduce the fractional uncertainty to the level of $7\cdot10^{-12}$ for fundamental transitions and to $4\cdot10^{-12}$ for the ionization energies.