Theories are developed to evaluate Larmor frequency shifts, derived from geometric phases, in experiments to measure electric dipole moments (EDM's) of trapped, atoms, molecules, and neutrons. A part of these shifts is proportional to the applied electric field and can be interpreted falsely as an electric dipole moment. A comparison is made between our theoretical predictions for these shifts and some results from our recent experiments, which shows agreement to within the experimental errors of 15%. The comparison also demonstrates that some trapped particle EDM experiments have reached a sensitivity where stringent precautions are needed to minimize and control such false EDM's. Computer simulations of these processes are also described. They give good agreement with the analytical results and they extend the study by investigating the influence of varying surface reflection laws in the hard-walled traps considered. They also explore the possibility to suppress such false EDM's by introducing collisions with buffer gas particles. Some analytic results for frequency shifts proportional to the square of the E field are also given and there are results for the averaging of the B field in the absence of an E field.

Interactions à courte portée Physique des neutrons Les forces type-AxionWe consider theoretical motivations to search for extra short-range fundamental forces as well as experiments constraining their parameters. The forces could be of two types: 1) spin-independent forces; 2) spin-dependent axion-like forces. Different experimental techniques are sensitive in respective ranges of characteristic distances. The techniques include measurements of gravity at short distances, searches for extra interactions on top of the Casimir force, precision atomic and neutron experiments. We focus on neutron constraints, thus the range of characteristic distances considered here corresponds to the range accessible for neutron experiments.

Article (Published Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Alterev, I, Harris, Philip, Shiers, David and et al, (2009) Neutron to mirror-neutron oscillations in the presence of mirror magnetic fields. Physical Review D, 80 (3). 032003. ISSN 1550-7998 This version is available from Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/16039/ This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies and may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the URL above for details on accessing the published version. Copyright and reuse:Sussex Research Online is a digital repository of the research output of the University.Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. To the extent reasonable and practicable, the material made available in SRO has been checked for eligibility before being made available.Copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way.Neutron to mirror-neutron oscillations in the presence of mirror magnetic fields We performed ultracold neutron storage measurements to search for additional losses due to neutron (n) to mirror-neutron (n 0 ) oscillations as a function of an applied magnetic field B. In the presence of a mirror magnetic field B 0 , ultracold neutron losses would be maximal for B % B 0 . We did not observe any indication for nn 0 oscillations and placed a lower limit on the oscillation time of nn 0 > 12:0sat 95% C.L. for any B 0 between 0 and 12:5 T.

We discuss the design and performance of a very sensitive low-field magnetometer based on the detection of free spin precession of gaseous, nuclear polarized 3 He or 129 Xe samples with a SQUID as magnetic flux detector. The device will be employed to control fluctuating magnetic fields and gradients in a new experiment searching for a permanent electric dipole moment of the neutron as well as in a new type of 3 He/ 129 Xe clock comparison experiment which should be sensitive to a sidereal variation of the relative spin precession frequency. Characteristic spin precession times after one day. Even in that sensitivity range, the magnetometer performance is statistically limited, and noise sources inherent to the magnetometer are not limiting. The reason is that free precessing 3 He ( 129 Xe) nuclear spins are almost completely decoupled from the environment. That makes this type of magnetometer in particular attractive for precision field measurements where a long-term stability is required.

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A clock comparison experiment, analyzing the ratio of spin precession frequencies of stored ultracold neutrons and 199 Hg atoms is reported. No daily variation of this ratio could be found, from which is set an upper limit on the Lorentz invariance violating cosmic anisotropy field b ⊥ < 2 × 10 −20 eV (95% C.L.). This is the first limit for the free neutron. This result is also interpreted as a direct limit on the gravitational dipole moment of the neutron |gn| < 0.3 eV/c 2 m from a spin-dependent interaction with the Sun. Analyzing the gravitational interaction with the Earth, based on previous data, yields a more stringent limit |gn| < 3 × 10 −4 eV/c 2 m.PACS numbers: 14.20. Dh, 11.30.Er, 11.30.Cp, Lorentz symmetry is a fundamental hypothesis of our current understanding of physics and is central to the foundations of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM). However, the SM is widely believed to be only the low energy limit of some more fundamental theory, a theory which will probably violate more symmetries than the SM, in order to accomodate some features of the universe currently lacking in the SM, e.g., the baryon asymmetry. A SM extension including Lorentz and CPT violating terms has been presented in [1]. It provides a parametrisation of effects suitable to be tested by low energy precision experiments. In particular, clock comparison experiments [2, 3] have proven to be particularly sensitive to spin-dependent effects arising from a so-called cosmic spin anisotropy fieldb filling the whole universe. This Letter reports on a search for such an exotic field via its coupling to free neutrons.In the presence of a fieldb, the two spin states of the neutron will encounter an extra contribution to the energy splitting corresponding to the potential V = σ ·b where σ are the Pauli matrices. Thus, if a neutron is subjected to both a static magnetic field B and the new field b, its spin will precess at the modified Larmor frequency f n , which to first order inb is given byWe searched for a sidereal modulation (at a period of 23.934 hours) of the neutron Larmor frequency induced by b ⊥ , the component ofb orthogonal to the Earth's rotation axis. The experiment is also sensitive to a possible influence of the Sun on the spin precession dynamics, leading to a solar modulation (at a period of 24 h) of the Larmor frequency, as proposed in [4]. Such an effect could arise from a non-standard spin-dependent component of gravity [5,6] or from another long-range spindependent force [7,8]. In particular, a non-zero neutron gravitational dipole moment g n would induce a coupling through (see also [9])where G is Newton's constant, and for the mass M and

We report on the search for a CPT and Lorentz invariance violating coupling of the 3 He and 129 Xe nuclear spins (each largely determined by a valence neutron) to background tensor fields which permeate the universe. Our experimental approach is to measure the free precession of nuclear spin polarized 3 He and 129 Xe atoms in a homogeneous magnetic guiding field of about 400 nT using LTC SQUIDs as low-noise magnetic flux detectors. As the laboratory reference frame rotates with respect to distant stars, we look for a sidereal modulation of the Larmor frequencies of the co-located spin samples. As a result we obtain an upper limit on the equatorial component of the background field interacting with the spin of the bound neutronb n ⊥ < 6.7 · 10 −34 GeV (68% C.L.). Our result improves our previous limit (data measured in 2009) by a factor of 30 and the world's best limit by a factor of 5. [4,5] test the isotropy of the interactions of matter itself. Searches for an anomalous spin coupling to a relic background field which permeates the universe have been performed with electron and nuclear spins with increasing sensitivity [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The theoretical framework presented by A. Kostelecký and colleagues parametrizes the general treatment of CPT and Lorentz invariance violating (LV) effects in a Standard Model Extension (SME) [19][20][21]. The SME was conceived to facilitate experimental investigations of Lorentz and CPT symmetry, given the theoretical motivation for violation of these symmetries. Although Lorentz-breaking interactions are motivated by models such as string theory [21,22], loop quantum gravity [23][24][25][26], etc., the low-energy effective action appearing in the SME is independent of the underlying theory. The SME contains a number of possible terms that couple to the spins of fundamental Standard Model particles like the electron, or composite particles like the proton and (bound) neutron. These terms are small due to Planckscale suppression (M p ), and in principle are measurable in experiments by detecting tiny energy shifts of order ∆E (n) ∼ ( mw Mp ) n · m w , where the low energy scale is set by the mass m w of the particle. Since n = 1 is largely ruled out by present experiments [27], tuning the measurement sensitivity to second order effects (n = 2) in Planck scale suppression is the current challenge 1 . To de- * Corresponding author: allmendinger@physi.uni-heidelberg.de 1 For the neutron (mn = 939 MeV) this is ∆E (2) ≈ 10 −38 GeV.termine the leading-order effects of a LV potential V , it suffices to use a non-relativistic description for the particles involved given bywhich can be interpreted as a coupling of the electron, proton or neutron spin σ w J to a hypothetical background fieldb w J . The most sensitive tests so far were performed on the bound neutron using a 3 He-129 Xe Zeeman maser [12, 13], a 3 He-129 Xe co-magnetometer [28] based on free spin precession, and a K-3 He co-magnetometer [7]. The latter one so far gave the highest energy resol...