Limiting P-Odd Interactions of Cosmic Fields with Electrons, Protons, and Neutrons

B. M. Roberts, Y. V. Stadnik, V. A. Dzuba, V. V. Flambaum, N. Leefer, D. Budker, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 081601 (2014)

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.081601

arXiv:1404.2723

We propose methods for extracting limits on the strength of P-odd interactions of pseudoscalar and pseudovector cosmic fields with electrons, protons and neutrons. Candidates for such fields are dark matter (including axions) and dark energy, as well as several more exotic sources described by standard-model extensions. Calculations of parity nonconserving amplitudes and atomic electric dipole moments induced by these fields are performed for H, Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Ba+, Tl, Dy, Fr, and Ra+. From these calculations and existing measurements in Dy, Cs and Tl, we constrain the interaction strengths of the parity-violating static pseudovector cosmic field to be \(7\times10^{-15}\) GeV with an electron, and \(3\times10^{-8}\) GeV with a proton.

Written on 1 August 2014