EDMs 2026: Complementary Experiments and Theory Connections

The search for permanent electric dipole moments (EDMs) of subatomic particles provide a powerful probe of CP violation and physics beyond the Standard Model. This second edition (following on a very succesful first workshop at ECT* in 2023), is part of a European initiative to strengthen connexions between experiment and theory, bringing together complementary methods from nuclear, particle, atomic and molecular physics, as well as advanced theoretical calculations.

While many speakers have already confirmed availability, the detailed program is still being defined. We seek to represent as broad as possible a cross-section of theoretical and experimental activities in relation to permanent electric dipole moments, and also welcome participation from allied fields such as magnetic dipole/quadrupole moments, or hadronic parity violation, that can be interpreted in a common framework.

Our central scientific questions in relation to EDMs include the following:

• What is are the most driving modern motivations for EDM searches, in light of challenges to electroweak baryogenesis?
• Which experiments most complement each other in terms of their methods? In terms of their constraining power?
• What theoretical inputs are most needed for completing, or reducing uncertainty in, the interpretation of experimental results?
• Which experimental systems are now facing new challenges, and which ones show the most potential for improvements?
• What new facilities and technologies are on the horizon, and which experiments or calculations could most profit from them?

An explicit additional goal is to assist the community in self-organizing for easier exchanges of knowledge and personnel, within and beyond Europe. In this view, we plan to incorporate moderated discussion sessions on key community-level challenges, including:

• How can we best support advanced training for students across a geographically dispersed community, with relatively few students at any one institution?
• Can we establish common ground for notations and physics conventions, to lower the barriers for understanding each other's work?
• Are there methods or technologies under development (or already developed), for which awareness is lacking among people and groups who could use them?
• How can we establish networks that ease the transfer of students and post-docs among groups, thus mitigating painful recruitment challenges of the last years?

Further information