Electric Dipole Moments and CP-violation in the top-Higgs sector

by Dr Jordy De Vries

Wednesday 15 Jun 2016, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Brussels

E/3rd floor-E.349 - Seminar room (E.349) (Marc de Hemptinne (chemin du Cyclotron, 2, Louvain-la-Neuve))

Permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) provide a sensitive probe of flavor-diagonal CP violation. If measured they are unambiguous signs of new physics, since CP violation in the quark mixing matrix predict EDMs orders of magnitude away from current experimental limits. The Standard Model (SM) also contains the QCD vacuum angle whose size is strongly limited by EDM experiments. This smallness leaves room for CP violation from physics beyond the SM, something which is motivated to exist in order to explain the universal matter/antimatter asymmetry.

 

Although EDM experiments involve systems consisting of first-generation particles they nevertheless set strong constraints on anomalous interactions of heavy particles such as the top and the Higgs. Within the SM effective field theory, I discuss how EDM measurements can probe such interactions and how the constraints match up against direct high-energy experiments. Along the way, I will illustrate how various effective field theories can be applied to calculate EDMs of complicated objects, such as hadrons and nuclei, in terms of more fundamental quantities in a systematic way.