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The existence of the matter in the universe is still an unsolved puzzle. After the Big Bang, both matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts, and subsequently annihilated. The leading theories to explain the existence of matter require an imbalance in the production of matter and antimatter in the early universe. This in turn requires CP violation, an asymmetry of the laws of physics between matter and antimatter. cryoEDM is designed to explore the total amount of CP violation and resolve this issue. cryoEDM is a next-generation neutron electric dipole moment search in a commissioning phase of development at the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble. A critical requirement of EDM searches is knowledge of the magnetic environment. This work is concerned with the development, implementation, and performance of the currently operating magnetometry system based on SQUID magnetometers. An analysis scheme to provide magnetometry data over the volume occupied by the neutrons, from measurements using the available magnetometers, is developed. An updated method to calibrate the magnetometers using internal sources of magnetic fields is presented, and found to give good agreement with independent measurements. A new method of calibration using the neutrons as a reference is discussed, and tests on an example arrangement are shown to be promising. Algorithms for detecting and correcting for hardware induced artefacts in the data are produced, and demonstrated to reconstruct the field with good agreement in all but the noisiest environments. A software framework is developed to combine these into a real-time analysis that provides feedback and diagnostics to the experiment. Using this new system the resolution of the magnetometers installed in cryoEDM is found to be limited by the environmental noise, and would give a false EDM signal that is greater than the statistical uncertainty in neutron counting. However, the resolution has been somewhat artificially limited to reduce the susceptibility to the RF interference present. This still allows the magnetometry to act as a useful diagnostic tool on any issues in the current magnetic environment, even if in a sub-optimal configuration. For example, investigation of the magnetic shielding of the experiment finds a reduction in the shielding relative to the design, a situation which is being addressed with the design of additional shielding. Once this shielding is installed the resolution of the magnetometers will improve as well as the slew rate of the SQUIDs, which is found to be lower than the $47,mu extup{Ts}^{-1}$ required to measure AC fields applied during a measurement. The current system can also determine sources of magnetic perturbations created within the experiment, which will require addressing before a full EDM run can be performed. For example, cryogenic effects are observed to occur approximately hourly causing large shifts in the magnetic field. Also operation of valves controlling the flow of neutrons around the experiment are found to produce both AC magnetic fields from the driving motors, and shifts in the field from their movement. Situations which can be resolved by reexamination of installation and operational procedures.

The ACME collaboration aims to measure the eEDM via Ramsey spectroscopy of a cryogenic beam of ThO molecules in their metastable H state. This thesis describes the launch of this new experimental effort. A set of diode lasers has been built to address all the necessary ThO transitions. The laser frequencies were stabilized to a stable reference laser via a \(Fabry-P\acute{e}rot\) transfer cavity. A measurement of the magnetic dipole moment of the H state has been performed that is complementary to a previous measurement by the collaboration. This value is important for determining the sensitivity of the H state to magnetic fields, which can be a source of noise and systematic errors in the eEDM measurement. Experimental efforts to prepare the coherent superposition of the \(M = \pm1\) Zeeman sublevels in the H,J = 1 state that is the starting point of the eEDM experiment using transitions to the G state resulted in a better understanding of transitions between \(\Omega\)-doublet states in an electric field. This led to a new technique for normalizing out shot-to-shot fluctuations in the molecular beam flux, which has also been demonstrated experimentally. / Physics

The Standard Model of particle physics is wonderfully successful in its predictions but known to be incomplete. It fails to explain the existence of dark matter, and the fact that a universe made of matter survived annihilation with antimatter following the big bang. Extensions to the Standard Model, such as weak-scale Supersymmetry, provide explanations for some of these phenomena by asserting the existence of new particles and new interactions that break symmetry under time-reversal. These theories predict a small, yet potentially measurable electron electric dipole moment (EDM), $d_e$, that also violates time-reversal symmetry. Here, we report a new measurement of the electron EDM in the polar molecule thorium monoxide (ThO): $d_e = -2.1 \pm 3.7stat \pm 2.5syst x 10-29$ e cm, which corresponds to an upper limit of $|d_e| <8.7 x 10-29$ e cm with 90 \% confidence. This is more than an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity compared to the previous limit. This result sets strong constraints on new physics at an energy scale (TeV) at least as high as that directly probed by the Large Hadron Collider. The unprecedented precision of this EDM measurement was achieved by using the high effective electric field within ThO to greatly magnify the EDM signal. Valence electrons travel relativistically near the heavy thorium nucleus and experience an effective electric field of about 100 GV/cm, millions of times larger than any static laboratory field. The reported measurement is a combination of millions of separate EDM measurements performed with billions of ThO molecules in a cold, slow buffer gas beam. Other features of ThO, such as a near-zero magnetic moment and high electric polarizability, allow potential systematic errors to be drastically suppressed and ensure the accuracy of our measurement. / Physics

It is a well known fact that the visible universe is made almost entirely of baryonic matter. Yet, this is also one of the greatest puzzles that physicists are trying to solve: Where did all of this matter come from in the first place? The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics predicts a baryon asymmetry that is much smaller than what is observed in nature. In order to try and explain this discrepancy, Sakharov (1967) postulated three necessary conditions for baryogenesis in the early universe. One of these is the requirement that charge conjugation (C) and the product of C and parity (P) symmetries are violated. Because the SM fails to generate the observed baryon asymmetry, additional sources of CP violation are needed in order to help reconcile theory and observation. Thus, physicists have been looking for extensions to the SM in search of an answer. The presence of a neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM) would signal a new source of CP violation. A non-vanishing nEDM would provide evidence for the breaking of both parity (P) and time-reversal symmetry (T). Because CPT symmetry is assumed to be conserved and has not been found to be broken, this would signal CP violation. To look for an nEDM, stored ultracold neutrons are placed in parallel and anti-parallel magnetic and electric fields and the Larmor precession frequency is carefully measured. A difference in the precession frequency of the neutrons in the two states of the fields would signal the existence of an nEDM. The current upper limit of the nEDM was set by the RAL-Sussex-ILL collaboration and stands at dn < 3.0x10-26 e cm (90% CL). Currently a new cryogenic apparatus is under construction at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) which aims to reduce the current upper limit by two orders of magnitude. A central problem to all neutron EDM experiments is the generation of a highly uniform and stable magnetic field. Because the suppression of systematic effects that arise from magnetic field nonuniformities and temporal drifts is vital to the success of these experiments, it is important to have the ability to precisely control and monitor the magnetic field gradients inside of the experimental volume. However, it is not always possible to measure the field gradients within the region of interest directly. To remedy this issue in the SNS nEDM experiment, a field monitoring system has been designed and tested that will allow for the reconstruction of the field gradients inside of the fiducial volume using noninvasive measurements of the field components at discrete locations external to this volume. This document will outline the theoretical framework of our method and present the results of experimental and simulated studies performed and the engineering design for such a field monitoring system.

The discovery of neutrino mixing provides the possibility of a non vanishing CP violating phase in the neutrino mixing matrix. CP violation in the leptonic sector can be large enough to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. An indirect probe of CP violation is the experimental measurement of Electric Dipole Moment (EDM). CP violation has been discovered in the quark sector,but it contributes to lepton EDM at the 3-loop level. Neutrino masses can be generated in the standard model via the see-saw mechanism where heavy right-handed neutrinos mix with the weak-basis states. The Majorana nature of the seesaw type neutrinos generates new 2-loop diagrams that lead to a non-vanishing lepton EDM. Only estimates of the resulting EDM have been done in the literature. A full calculation of the 2-loop diagrams and the exact result is presented. / Ph. D.

The Effective Field Theory formalism is applied to the study of problems in hadronic and nuclear physics. We develop a framework to study the exclusive two-body decays of bottomonium into two charmed mesons and apply it to study the decays of the C-even bottomonia. Using a sequence of effective field theories, we take advantage of the separation between the scales contributing to the decay processes, 2m(b) ≫ m(c) ≫∧(QCD). We prove that, at leading order in the EFT power counting, the decay rate factorizes into the convolution of two perturbative matching coefficients and three non-perturbative matrix elements, one for each hadron. We calculate the relations between the decay rate and non-perturbative bottomonium and D-meson matrix elements at leading order, with next-to-leading log resummation. The phenomenological implications of these relations are discussed. At lower energies, we use Chiral Perturbation Theory and nuclear EFTs to set up a framework for the study of time reversal (T) symmetry in one- and few-nucleon problems. We consider T violation from the QCD θ term and from all the possible dimension 6 operators, expressed in terms of light quarks, gluons and photons, that can be added to the Standard Model Lagrangian. We construct the low energy chiral Lagrangian stemming from different TV sources, and derive the implications for the nucleon Electric Dipole Form Factor and the deuteron T violating electromagnetic Form Factors. Finally, with an eye to applications to nuclei with A ≥ 2, we construct the T violating nucleon-nucleon potential from different sources of T violation.

abstract: Seeking an upper limit of the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM) is a test of charge-parity (CP) violation beyond the Standard Model. The present experimentally tested nEDM upper limit is 3x10^(26) e cm. An experiment to be performed at the Oak Ridge National Lab Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) facility seeks to reach the 3x10^(28) e cm limit. The experiment is designed to probe for a dependence of the neutron's Larmor precession frequency on an applied electric eld. The experiment will use polarized helium-3 (3He) as a comagnetometer, polarization analyzer, and detector. Systematic influences on the nEDM measurement investigated in this thesis include (a) room temperature measurements on polarized 3He in a measurement cell made from the same materials as the nEDM experiment, (b) research and development of the Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices (SQUID) which will be used in the nEDM experiment, (c) design contributions for an experiment with nearly all the same conditions as will be present in the nEDM experiment, and (d) scintillation studies in superfluid helium II generated from alpha particles which are fundamentally similar to the nEDM scintillation process. The result of this work are steps toward achievement of a new upper limit for the nEDM experiment at the SNS facility. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Physics 2019

Charge-Conjugation (C) and Charge-Conjugation-Parity (CP) Violation is one of the three Sakharov conditions to explain via baryogenesis the observed baryon asymmetry of the universe (BAU). The Standard Model of particle physics (SM) contains sources of CP violation, but cannot explain the BAU. This motivates searches for new physics beyond the standard model (BSM) which address the Sakharov criteria, including high-precision searches for new sources of CPV in systems for which the SM contribution is small, but larger effects may be present in BSM theories. A promising example is the search for the electric dipole moment of the neutron (nEDM), which is a novel system to observe CPV due to the initial and final state being identical. A non-zero measurement necessarily requires violation of P and T discrete symmetries; invoking CPT invariance requires that CP is violated. There are BSM theories which predict a magnitude for the nEDM larger than SM predictions, so that such studies are beneficial at setting constraints on new physics. The current experimental limit of dn < 3.0 x 10-26 e cm at 90% CL as set by the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) [1] was largely limited by systematic effects related to the magnetic field. The research presented here supported technical progress toward a new measurement of the nEDM, with the goal of improving the result by an order of magnitude. A novel approach to the problem of limiting systematics is proposed, studied in Monte Carlo simulations, and an optimized prototype was constructed for use in a magnetic resonance experiment.