Progress on the JILA Gen. III eEDM Experiment

The third generation (Gen. III) apparatus for the measurement of the electron electric dipole moment (eEDM) at JILA utilizes ThF⁺ whose eEDM sensitive state promises coherence time of ~20 seconds [1,2,3]. To fully take advantage of the long coherence time, it is necessary to decouple repetition time of the experiment from the long coherence time. We plan to make a “conveyor belt” of 25 consecutive ion traps, named the Bucket Brigade (B.B.) which will continuously load and read out ThF⁺, allowing for an increased duty cycle without compromising long interrogation times. We are currently studying the prototype of the Bucket Brigade, the baby Bucket Brigade (b.B.B) which has only one ion trap. Here, we present our progress towards a continuous-mode precision measurement including measurements of quantum evolution during ion transport.

[1] Gresh, Daniel N., et al. Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy 319 (2016): 1-9.

[2] Zhou, Yan et al. J. Mol. Spec. 358, (2019) 1-16

[3] Ng, Kia Boon et al. Physical Review A 105 (2022): 022823