JILA Postdoc Candidate Seminar - Spin Interferometry with Ultracold YbF Molecules to Measure the Electron’s Electric Dipole Moment

Title: Spin Interferometry with Ultracold YbF Molecules to Measure the Electron’s Electric Dipole Moment Speaker: Rhys Jenkins, Imperial College London, UK Event Details: The electron’s electric dipole moment (eEDM) can be measured through the precession of the electron spin in an applied electric field. The precision is greatly enhanced when the electron is bound into a heavy polar molecule. The statistical precision improves with spin precession time, so a slow, ultracold beam of molecules provides a promising route to measure the eEDM beyond the current experimental limit. We use a beam of collimated ultracold YbF molecules produced by a cryogenic buffer gas source and then laser cooled to 100 µK in the two transverse axes [1]. Such cooling increases beam brightness and spin precession time, improving the statistical sensitivity of the experiment. However, magnetic field noise can severely limit the precision of our phase sensitive measurement of the eEDM. To suppress this noise sou...