Advances in the Measurement of the Electron Electric Dipole Moment

Abstract

Searches for the electron electric dipole moment (eEDM) are powerful tests of physics beyond the standard model, as they probe for new evidence of time-reversal violating interactions. In 2018 our ACME collaboration reported a measurement of the eEDM which set a new limit of |d_e| 1.1 × 10^−29 e · cm, which improved on the sensitivity of the previous best measurement, also set by the ACME collaboration, by an order of magnitude. With the development of a new ACME III apparatus, we intend to perform a new measurement with an order of magnitude improved sensitivity over the ACME II result. The new experiment has should both upgrade the statistical uncertainty of the measurement and upgrade the suppression of the effects of known sources of systematic error. To upgrade our statistical sensitivity we have implemented upgrades to our molecular beam flux, increased our precession time, and increased to our detection efficiency. To suppress known sources of systematic error and noise below our projected new sensitivity we have developed new magnetic shields, improved our experiment timing controls, and developed new methods to sup- press laser polarization gradients in our system.