A group of physicists at the University of Nevada, Reno, US, are reporting a refined analysis of experiments on violation of mirror symmetry in atoms that sets new constraints on a hypothesized particle, the extra Z-boson.
"It is remarkable that the low-cost atomic precision experiments and theory are capable of constraining new physics at the level competitive to colliders" - Andrei Derevianko, an associate professor in the College of Sciences Department of Physics.
Derevianko has been able to define new limits without needing something like a 6 billion dollars Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an enormous particle accelerator in Europe that is not yet fully operational.
In a forthcoming Physical Review Letter article, a group of physicists at the University of Nevada, Reno are reporting an analysis of an experiment on violation of mirror symmetry in atoms. Their refined analysis sets new limits on a hypothesised particle, the extra Z-boson, carving out the lower-energy part of the discovery reach of the LHC. Andrei Derevianko, an associate professor in the College of Sciences Department of Physics, who has conducted groundbreaking research to improve the time-telling capabilities of the worlds most accurate atomic clocks, is one of the principals behind what is believed to be the most accurate to-date low-energy determination of the strength of the electroweak coupling between atomic electrons and quarks of the nucleus. Derevianko and his colleagues have determined the coupling strength by combining previous measurements made by Dr. Carl Wieman, a Nobel laureate in physics, with high-precision calculations in a cesium atom.