Let there be light... and flux quanta: anticipating the first signals from nEDM@SNS

The neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) experiment at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) of ORNL will improve the currently best world-wide nEDM limit by two-orders-of-magnitude by performing high-precision nuclear magnetic resonance simultaneously on polarized ultracold neutrons and polarized 3He in a 3 L bath of 0.4 K superfluid helium. In order to reach this unprecedented precision, a novel scheme combining techniques from nuclear and particle physics as well as atomic, molecular and optical physics will be used.
Focus will be given on two activities: (1) the Systematics and Operational Studies apparatus currently being commissioned at NC State University. This apparatus will provide the first live, in-situ neutron spin precession signal, via the neutron-3He capture induced scintillation light, along with the 3He cohabiting magnetometer signal measured by SQUIDs. (2) simulations and data analysis being performed on ORNL’s Titan and Big PanDA computing resources and University of Kentucky’s DLX cluster. Our goal is to develop the required techniques for extracting the neutron precession frequency from the unique counting-limited oscillating scintillation light signal, and applying the required corrections from the phase-noise-limited 3He SQUID signal.