  Laser induced electronic excitations that spontaneously emit photons and
decay directly to the initial ground state ("optical cycling transitions") are
used in quantum information and precision measurement for state initialization
and readout. To extend this primarily atomic technique to organic compounds, we
theoretically investigate optical cycling of alkaline earth phenoxides and
their functionalized derivatives. We find that optical cycle leakage due to
wavefunction mismatch is low in these species, and can be further suppressed by
using chemical substitution to boost the electron withdrawing strength of the
aromatic molecular ligand through resonance and induction effects. This
provides a straightforward way to use chemical functional groups to construct
optical cycling moieties for laser cooling, state preparation, and quantum
measurement.
