Electric Dipole Moment - Dipole Moments of Fundamental Particles

Dipole Moments of Fundamental Particles

Much experimental work is continuing on measuring the electric dipole moments (EDM) of fundamental and composite particles, namely those of the neutron and electron. As EDMs violate both the Parity (P) and Time (T) symmetries, their values yield a mostly model-independent measure (assuming CPT symmetry is valid) of CP-violation in nature. Therefore, values for these EDMs place strong constraints upon the scale of CP-violation that extensions to the standard model of particle physics may allow.

Indeed, many theories are inconsistent with the current limits and have effectively been ruled out, and established theory permits a much larger value than these limits, leading to the strong CP problem and prompting searches for new particles such as the axion.

Current generations of experiments are designed to be sensitive to the supersymmetry range of EDMs, providing complementary experiments to those done at the LHC.

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