Parity violation and electric dipole moments in atoms and molecules

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of parity and time invariance violations in atoms, nuclei, and molecules, emphasizing experimental searches for electric dipole moments and related phenomena to explore fundamental symmetries.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent experimental efforts and promising research directions in detecting parity violation and electric dipole moments in atomic and molecular systems.

Findings

Advances in measuring parity non-conservation in cesium.

Progress in searching for nuclear anapole moments.

Development of methods to detect permanent electric dipole moments.

Abstract

We review the current status of the study of parity and time invariance violation in atoms, nuclei and molecules. We focus on parity non-conservation in cesium and three of the most promising areas of research: (i) parity non-conservation in a chain of isotopes, (ii) search for nuclear anapole moments, and (iii) search for permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) of atoms and molecules, which in turn are caused by either an electron EDM or nuclear $T,P$-odd moments such as a nuclear EDM or nuclear Schiff moment.