Search for Anomalous Physics with Precision Measurements

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

The spatial orientation of an experiment should never affect its outcome. For light, this principle has been tested in the famous Michelson-Morley experiment leading to the basic principle in physics known as "Lorentz invariance" and, more generally, Einstein's theory of Special Relativity. Modern theories of matter require that not only light but also all other particles should be invariant to rotations. The goal of the experiments in this project will be to perform a Michelson-Morley experiment for electrons. Detecting even tiny energy variations between electrons moving in different directions would mean that space is not isotropic and that we need an entirely new class of theories to describe nature. For the experiment, a laser pulse will create superpositions of electronic wavepackets inside Calcium ions. Those wavepackets will then evolve independently of each other in orthogonal directions. A second laser pulse will then recombine the wavepackets. The corresponding interference signal will be directly sensitive to the difference in how the two electronic wavepackets move. The experiments rely heavily on tools developed for ion trap quantum information processing to control and measure the quantum state of individual Calcium ions. In particular, engineering symmetric quantum states of two and more ions makes the signal immune to common noise sources such as magnetic field fluctuations. Thus, the long coherence of the electron motion in combination with accurate control of all relevant systematic error sources will enable testing the isotropy of space and Lorentz invariance at the level of (and beyond) 1 part in ten to the nineteen (nineteen decimal places of accuracy).