{"id":4295,"date":"2009-12-02T14:21:39","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T14:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2009\/12\/02\/using-molecules-to-search-for\/"},"modified":"2009-12-02T14:21:39","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T14:21:39","slug":"using-molecules-to-search-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2009\/12\/02\/using-molecules-to-search-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Molecules to Search for New Physics"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve made a couple of oblique references to this over the past couple of months, but I have an article in the new issue of Physics World<\/cite>, on experiments using molecules to search for an electric dipole moment of the electron<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

When most of us think about searching for physics beyond the Standard Model – the dominant paradigm of particle physics – the first thing that springs to mind is probably a gigantic particle accelerator like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Within the collider’s 27-km loop, protons slam together at 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Office-building-sized detectors generate terabytes of data for physicists to sift through, seeking elusive traces of new kinds of particles.<\/p>\n

But there is another type of search for new physics under way as well, this time in atomic-physics labs. Using apparatus no more than a few metres in size, and energies a trillion times lower than those at the LHC, these experimentalists are trying to detect new particles, too – by measuring the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron.<\/p>\n

The logic behind their search is that under the basic Standard Model, a detectable electron EDM is forbidden. Hence, finding a tiny-but-finite EDM would indicate that the Standard Model needs revision, thereby opening the door to a new class of “virtual particles”. From an experimental standpoint, the task is not easy: how do you measure something that is almost, but not quite, zero? Yet these EDM searches may nevertheless be our best chance of discovering new physics until the LHC reaches its full potential – and perhaps even beyond then. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I believe the article is freely available (registration may be required)– at least, it didn’t prompt me for subscriber information, and I’m pretty sure we don’t have an institutional subscription. In which case, you should click the link, and read the whole thing…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This was my first time writing a science article for a magazine– I’ve done technical journal articles, and a couple of pieces for Inside Higher Ed<\/cite>, but no short general audience science pieces (the book is much longer, and a very different process). I was impressed by how quickly the whole thing went– I agreed to do the piece in September, turned in a first draft October 12, went through a couple of rounds of edits, and was looking at page proofs by mid-November. An academic journal would be sending the second reminder to the referees at that point…<\/p>\n

I think it turned out pretty well. Dave DeMille at Yale, Ben Sauer at Imperial College, London, and Chris Regan at UCLA were kind enough to answer my questions (some of them pretty dumb), and I hope I’ve done an adequate job of representing their research accurately. All the inevitable errors are undoubtedly mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve made a couple of oblique references to this over the past couple of months, but I have an article in the new issue of Physics World, on experiments using molecules to search for an electric dipole moment of the electron: When most of us think about searching for physics beyond the Standard Model –… Continue reading Using Molecules to Search for New Physics<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,7,23,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","category-physics","category-quantum_optics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}