Universe Colloquium: The search for particle electric dipole moments

by Fierlinger Peter (Universe Cluster, TU Muenchen)

Wednesday 16 Nov 2011, 16:30 → 18:00 Europe/Berlin

seminar room (basement) (Cluster building, Garching)

Since the 1950’s people search for electric dipole moments (EDM) of fundamental systems, an unambiguous manifestation of new parity (P) and time reversal symmetry (T) violation. Assuming the conservation of CPT, T violation in a fundamental system also means CP violation. This has only been observed in very few systems yet and the Standard Model of particle physics (SM) includes these findings as phases in the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix. One famous open question is the missing explanation of the Baryon-asymmetry in the Universe, i.e. why there is more matter than anti-matter. In the last years experiments reached unprecedented accuracy, with upper limits for EDMs of atomic systems of d < 3·10^-29 e·cm. However, these small numbers are still five orders of magnitude away from the prediction of the SM, but already probe many  theories beyond the SM. In this talk I will present the status in the field and an overview of recent developments. Also, ideas to probe Lorentz-invariance at up to 10^13 GeV energies with clock comparison experiments as part of an EDM search will be discussed. Emphasis will be given to selected next-generation experiments to measure the EDM of the neutron and atoms which are currently being installed in Munich.

The talk is followed by a social gathering with wine and cheese.