NSF Award
1506451
The main physics program supported by this award is to search for an electric dipole moment of the neutron, which if found would signal new physics beyond the physics of the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the existence and properties of the principal elementary constituents of known matter. The search for physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) is one of the primary goals of physics in the 21st century. The experiment, called the neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM), will be carried out at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, using instruments constructed and tested by a consortium of institutions. Construction of the detector and the data taking will take place in the next few years, providing first hand experience in cutting edge research for undergraduates at Valparaiso University.<br/><br/>Precision measurement of the properties of the neutron presents an opportunity to search for violations of fundamental symmetries and to make critical tests of the validity of the Standard Model. The Standard Model nearly prohibits the existence of a permanent electric dipole moment of the neutron, whereas extensions to the Standard Model predict an electric dipole moment of the neutron at varying strengths that are potentially attainable by this experiment. The discovery of a nEDM would imply a violation of time reversal invariance and a violation of charge-parity symmetry that, depending on its magnitude, has implications for the particle-antiparticle asymmetry in the universe. Measurements of the particle electric dipole moment provide some of the tightest constraints on extensions to the Standard Model. The experiment is designed to improve the sensitivity by a factor of 100 compared to previous experiments.
