Cairncross, William

Date:   Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Time:   11:00
Place:   ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg, HIT H 51
Host:    Jonathan Home

Searching for time-reversal symmetry with molecular ions: quantum state control and photofragment imaging

William Cairncross
JILA and University of Colarado Boulder, USA

The relative abundance of matter over antimatter in the observable universe cannot be accounted for by the Standard Model of particle physics (SM), and requires additional sources of time-reversal symmetry violation to be explained. Theories seeking to explain this imbalance generically predict electric dipole moments of fundamental particles such as the electron. I will describe an ongoing search for the electron's electric dipole moment using trapped molecular ions. I will discuss our first results, and our new experimental techniques for state preparation and readout, which have contributed to a thirty-fold improvement in our statistical sensitivity.