Prof. Doug Beck has an RA Opening to Work on Neutron Electric Dipole Moment Experiment

Prof. Doug Beck has an immediate opening in his group for a student (RA) to begin working on his neutron electric dipole moment experiment (nEDM) at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France. The goal of the experiment is to reduce the current upper limit on the neutron EDM by about an order of magnitude. The existence of the nEDM depends on potentially unseen violations of time-reversal symmetry in nature as suggested by the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe and by various beyond-the-standard-model theories such as supersymmetry. This is a small collaboration of about 20 scientists from the Technical University Munich, ILL, Rutherford, Michigan and Illinois. The prospective student would be involved in all phases of the experiment from design, to commissioning, to operation, to analysis. Most of the apparatus exists and is in-place at the ILL; they expect the first neutrons in the apparatus in Fa18.

Here are links to a couple of papers about the experiment: http://www.universe-cluster.de/fierlinger/pdf/nedm_article_nuov_cim.pdf, including a report on the ‘magnetically quietist’ cubic meter in the world, along with a preprint of a recent review article.

Grenoble is the high-tech center of France located in the foothills of the Alps. It has a large science campus, situated between the Isere and Drax rivers, and including national laboratories, EU facilities and public/private partnerships. Ideally, the student would move to Grenoble within the next six months to spend two or three years there developing the experiment and making the first measurements.