Surface Processing and Discharge-Conditioning of High Voltage Electrodes for the Ra EDM Experiment

Abstract

The Ra EDM experiment uses a pair of high voltage electrodes to measure the atomic electric dipole moment of 225 Ra. We use identical, plane-parallel electrodes with a primary high gradient surface of 200 mm 2 to generate reversible DC electric fields. Our statistical sensitivity is linearly proportional to the electric field strength in the electrode gap. We adapted surface decontamination and processing techniques from accelerator physics literature to chemical polish and clean a suite of newly fabricated large-grain niobium and grade-2 titanium electrodes. Three pairs of niobium electrodes and one pair of titanium electrodes were discharge-conditioned with a custom high voltage test station at electric field strengths as high as +52.5 kV/mm and −51.5 kV/mm over electrode gap sizes ranging from 0.4 mm to 2.5 mm. One pair of large-grain niobium electrodes was discharge-conditioned and validated to operate at ±20 kV/mm with steady-state leakage current ≤ 25 pA (1σ) and a polarity-averaged 98 ± 19 discharges per hour. These electrodes were installed in the Ra EDM experimental apparatus, replacing a copper electrode pair, and were revalidated to ±20 kV/mm. The niobium electrodes perform at an electric field strength 3.1 times larger than the legacy copper electrodes and are ultimately limited by the maximum output of our 30 kV bipolar power supply.

Weinberg operator contribution to the CP-odd nuclear force in the quark model

“…In addition to its high sensitivity to new physics, it has other notable advantages such as the measurability in many systems (neutron, nuclei, atoms, muons, etc), the small SM background [4,[19][20][21][22][23][24], experimental cost, etc. There are already experimental results [25][26][27][28][29][30], as well as plans which aim to probe new physics scales far beyond the reach of LHC experiment, assuming O(1) couplings and CP phases [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”