ACME III: Advanced Cold Molecule Electron Electric Dipole Moment Search

The ACME collaboration stands between two physics communities—high energy physics and AMO (atomic, molecular and optical) physics. The science goals come from the former and the methods from the latter. Obtaining important science results on the 5-year time scale of our grant requires resources between what is typically needed in the two communities—much below what is required to operate the large LHC experiments, but above what is required for most AMO programs. During each of the last two grant periods, the three PI-led research groups demonstrated that they could work efficiently together by improving on the previous electron EDM sensitivity by an order of magnitude, within each 5 year period. This was a much shorter time than is usual for such precise measurements. Our budget request here includes funds for one additional postdoc and one additional graduate student compared to the last grant period. This reflects the substantial amount of new equipment to be incorporated into the apparatus, and the consequent increase in complexity of running the experiment and analyzing the data.