New limit on the permanent electric dipole moment of the 199Hg atom Norval Fortson, Professor of Physics, University of Washington

For over half a century physicists have been searching for a permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of a fundamental particle, atom, or molecule. Although such a time-reversal violating dipole has not yet been detected, highly touted theories of possible new physics, such as Supersymmetry, predict the existence of EDMs within reach of modern experiments. Recently our group at Washington completed a new EDM experiment with mercury atoms, and set the upper limit: |d( 199Hg)| < 3.1 x 10 -29 e cm. (95% C.L.). This result improves on our previous 199Hg limit by a factor of 7, and can be used to set new constraints on T and CP violation in physics beyond the standard model.