Laboratoire de Physique Théorique
Toulouse - UMR 5152

Electric dipole moments (EDMs) of atoms and molecules are created by fundamental interactions that violate time-reversal (T) symmetry. The mechanisms that give rise to such EDMs entail either EDMs of the constituent elementary particles or T-violating interactions between these particles, or both.

Current high-precision experiments combined with theoretical calculations on atomic systems that are carefully chosen to be sensitive in particular to new sources of such symmetry-violating interactions can, therefore, be used as powerful probes for physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). These probes currently surpass the sensitivity of collider searches (such as at the LHC) by 1-2 orders of magnitude.

In the talk I will review basic principles of EDM searches with atomic systems, present current upper bounds to some charge-parity (CP) violating parameters, and discuss what role theory plays in developing experiments on new systems with greater sensitivity to such BSM physics.