Speaker: Takeyasu Ito

P-25: SUBATOMIC PHYSICS

Experimental Searches for the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment

Abstract: 

Physicists have been trying for 60 years now to detect the possible separation of positive and negative electric charges inside the neutron. This quantity, called the Electric Dipole Moment (EDM), violates both the parity and time reversal symmetries and is a very sensitive probe of physics beyond the standard model of particle physics.

LANL has been one of the institutions leading the effort to develop a new neutron EDM experiment based on a novel cryogenic method, planned to run at the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to search for the neutron EDM with a sensitivity 2 orders of magnitude better than the current limit.

A recent successful upgrade of the LANL Ultracold Neutron Source has enabled a new opportunity to perform a neutron EDM experiment at LANL with existing technology and a short lead time, providing a physics result with sensitivity intermediate between the current limit and the anticipated limit from the complex, cryogenic SNS nEDM experiment.

In this talk, the physics motivation of EDM searches, the current status of the nEDM searches in the world, and the current status of the development of the two experiments that LANL is involved in will be discussed.