RUI: A Search for an Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron(Physics)

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It is proposed to measure the electric dipole moment (edm) of the cesium atom and thereby measure the edm of the electron. The existence of an edm for the electron would imply a violation of time-reversal invariance. The basic principle of the experiment is to spin polarize the ground state of cesium and to search for a precession of that polarization in an applied electric field. High polarizations and relatively long lifetimes can be obtained using optical pumping techniques and well designed cells. With precision polarization analyzing techniques, it is possible to observe very small precessions. In the present experiment an electron edm of about 10 (E-25) e-cm should be detectable. These results will place interesting constraints on super-symmetric gauge theories and other new unified models.