Search for New Physics Using the Electric Dipole Moment of Diamagnetic Atoms

Abstract

The electric dipole moment (EDM) is a low-energy observable that only gets finite when the CP symmetry is violated, and serves as an exclusively sensitive probe in detecting new physics. EDMs, being mostly searched for in composite systems, are generated at the elementary level and come up through several nontrivial processes which lie in wide hierarchies of energy scale. In the present article, we review the current status of EDM study and discuss problems still to be solved, mainly focusing on those of diamagnetic atoms which contain the elementary, hadronic, nuclear and atomic physics and relate the CP violation of candidates of physics beyond the standard model to the final observables.