FRIB hosted a two-week FRIB Theory Alliance (FRIB-TA) Topical Program titled “Hadronic electric dipole moments in the FRIB era: From the proton to protactinium” from 12-23 August.

The program, organized by Associate Professor Andrea Shindler, Assistant Professor of Physics Jaideep Singh, and Professor of Physics Vladimir Zelevinsky from MSU and Professor Chen-Yu Liu from Indiana University, was attended by forty-two participants from twenty-two institutions on three continents. The topical program website contains all the presentations of the program.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics (SM) has been widely successful in describing matter. However, researchers believe the SM does not provide the complete picture. For instance, it does not explain the observed matter/anti-matter asymmetry: Why is there more matter than antimatter in the present universe?

The searches for permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) are among the most sensitive probes of the new physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM). Combined with modern molecular precision measurements techniques developed for electron EDM searches, EDM searches using radioactive molecules could have an unprecedented sensitivity to study how fundamental symmetries of nature, such as parity, charge conjugation, and time-reversal are violated.

The focus of the program was on the unique research opportunities offered by FRIB in this area. It also examined the need to clarify how the sources for symmetry violations manifest themselves at different energy scales with proper uncertainty quantification from both theory and experiment.