Measurement of an electron's electric dipole moment using Cs atoms trapped in optical lattices

Abstract

We propose to measure the electron's permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) using cesium atoms trapped in a sparsely populated, trichromatic, far blue-detuned three-dimensional (3D) optical lattice. In the proposed configuration, the atoms can be strongly localized near the nodes of the light field and isolated from each other, leading to a strong suppression of the detrimental effects of atom-atom and atom-field interactions. Three linearly polarized standing waves with different frequencies create an effectively linearly polarized 3D optical lattice and lead to a strong reduction of the tensor light shift, which remains a potential source of systematic error. Other systematics concerning external field instability and gradients and higher-order polarizabilities are discussed. Furthermore, auxiliary atoms can be loaded into the same lattices as effective "comagnetometers" to monitor various systematic effects, including magnetic-field fluctuations and imperfect electric-field reversal. We estimate that a sensitivity 100 times higher than the current upper bound for the electron's EDM of 4 × 10-27 e cm can be achieved with the proposed technique. ©2001 The American Physical Society.