ThO

ACME Thorium Oxide Electron EDM Experiment

The ACME Collaboration Students and Postdocs, 2013. From left: Paul Hess, Brendon O'Leary, Ben Spaun, Cris Panda, Jacob Baron, Nick Hutzler, Elizabeth Petrik, and Adam West.

ACME (Advanced Cold Molecule Electron EDM) Collaboration:

• DeMille Group (Yale): Brendon O'Leary, Adam West, Dave DeMille
• Doyle Group: Nick Hutzler, Elizabeth Petrik, Jacob Baron, John Doyle
• Gabrielse Group (Harvard): Ben Spaun, Paul Hess, Cris Panda, Gerald Gabrielse
• Collaborators: Amar Vutha (York University), Wes Campbell (UCLA)

Former Members: Max Parsons (Harvard University), Yulia Gurevich (Yale University), Ivan Kozyryev (Harvard University), Chris Overstreet, Emil Kirilov (University of Innsbruck)

Click here for the ACME Collaboration website

Publications

• Proposal for the experiment: Search for the electric dipole moment of the electron with thorium monoxide. A.C. Vutha, W.C. Campbell, Y.V. Gurevich, N.R. Hutzler, M. Parsons, D. Patterson, E. Petrik, B. Spaun, J.M. Doyle, G. Gabrielse and D. DeMille. Journal of Physics B 43 074007 (2010). (arXiv)
• A study of our molecular beam: A cryogenic beam of refractory, chemically reactive molecules with expansion cooling. N. R. Hutzler, M. Parsons, Y. V. Gurevich, P. W. Hess, E. Petrik, B. Spaun, A. C. Vutha, D. DeMille, G. Gabrielse, J. M. Doyle. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2011, 13, 18976-18985.
• Measurement of magnetic and electric dipole moments in the EDM state of ThO: Magnetic and electric dipole moments of the ^3\Delta_1 state in ThO. A. C. Vutha, B. Spaun, Y. V. Gurevich, N. R. Hutzler, E. Kirilov, J. M. Doyle, G. Gabrielse, D. DeMille. Phys. Rev. A 84, 034502 (2011)
• ICAP 2012 Proceedings: Overview and Update. Advanced Cold Molecule Electron EDM. W. C. Campbell, C. Chan, D. DeMille, J. M. Doyle, G. Gabrielse, Y. V. Gurevich, P. W. Hess, N. R. Hutzler, E. Kirilov, B. O’Leary, E. S. Petrik, B. Spaun, and A. C. Vutha. EPJ Web of Conferences 57, 02004 (2013)
• Spin precession measurement scheme: Shot-noise-limited spin measurements in a pulsed molecular beam. E. Kirilov, W.C. Campbell, J.M. Doyle, G. Gabrielse, Y.V. Gurevich, P.W. Hess, N.R. Hutzler, B.R. O'Leary, E. Petrik, B. Spaun, A.C. Vutha, D. DeMille. Phys. Rev. A 88, 013844 (2013)
• First-generation result: Order of Magnitude Smaller Limit on the Electric Dipole Moment of the Electron with Supplementary Materials. ACME Collaboration: J. Baron, W. C. Campbell, D. DeMille, J. M. Doyle, G. Gabrielse, Y. V. Gurevich, P. W. Hess, N. R. Hutzler, E. Kirilov, I. Kozyryev, B. R. O'Leary, C. D. Panda, E. S. Petrik, B. Spaun, A. C. Vutha, A. D. West. Science 1248213 (2013)
• Study of higher-order Zeeman effects in our molecule: Zeeman interaction in ThO H^3\Delta_1 for the electron EDM search. A.N. Petrov, L.V. Skripnikov, A.V. Titov, N.R. Hutzler, P.W. Hess, B.R. O'Leary, B. Spaun, D. DeMille, G. Gabrielse, and J.M. Doyle. Phys. Rev. A 89, 062505 (2014)

Overview

In 2013, the ACME experiment set a new upper limit on the size of the electron's electric dipole moment of 8.7e-29 e*cm.

The ACME experiment uses a cryogenic molecular beam of the heavy polar molecule ThO to measure the electron's electric dipole moment (EDM). The existence of an electron EDM would manifest itself as very small energy shifts in certain molecular states when the molecules are in an electric field. The electron EDM is a very strong probe of physics beyond the standard model.

The molecular beam is is created by buffer gas cooling an ablated sample of ThO, which then flows out of an orifice. The molecules enter a magnetically shielded vacuum chamber that contains uniform electric and magnetic fields. We optically pump the molecules into the "H" electronic (EDM sensitive) state, and then polarize them by optically pumping undesired polarizations out of the H state. The molecules then precess in the fields, and we read out the accumulated phase with polarized lasers. By reversing the electric field, we can reverse the amount of precession accumulated from the electron EDM; taking the difference between these two phases yields the electron EDM.

This idea is the basis for any permanent EDM search, whether it is for atoms, neutrons, or electrons, however our experiment has several features that will enhance our sensitivity:

• Polar Molecule. Polar molecules have the highest known sensitivity to an electron electric dipole moment. The electric field inside a polar molecule can be as large as tens of gigavolts per centimeter, almost a million times larger than any controlled field that can be created in a laboratory. Because the energy of a dipole moment in an electric field is proportional to the field strength, the electrons orbiting a polar molecule can experience these large fields and give proportionally larger energy shift. The electric field in ThO has been calculated to be 84 GV/cm, one of the largest known.
• Internal Co-magnetometer. Since we measure tiny energy splittings, a small stray electric or magnetic field can could destroy our signal. Even worse, these stray fields could look like an EDM in certain situations, for example from leakage currents between the electric field plates. Our molecule has a parity doublet: two close-lying (a few hundred kilohertz in zero field) states of opposite parity in the ground rotational level of the H state. In addition to allowing complete polarization of the molecule in very weak fields, the two components of this doublet have equal yet opposite shifts from an electron EDM. In other words, the two different doublet states correspond to spectroscopically reversing the internal electric field experienced by the electron. Therefore, we can perform our field reversal without reversing any external fields, which will give us very powerful rejection of systematic errors. Other limiting systematics, such as geometric phases, can also be eliminated because they do not reverse between populating the different doublets.
• Cryogenic Beam Source. Our hydrodynamically-enhanced buffer gas cooled beam is high flux, cold, and slow. We produce beams of ThO with time-averaged fluxes of over 10^13 molecules/state/sr/second moving with a forward velocity of 170 m/s, without the need for stark or optical deceleration.

Funding

We would like to thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for funding our experiment.