Towards an electrostatic storage ring for fundamental physics measurements

Abstract

We describe a new table-top electrostatic storage ring concept for 30 keV polarized ions with fixed spin orientation. The device will ultimately be capable of measuring magnetic fields with a resolution of 10−20 T with sub-mHz bandwidth. With the possibility to store different kinds of ions or ionic molecules and access to prepare and probe states of the systems using lasers and SQUIDs, it can be used to search for electric dipole moments (EDMs) of electrons and nucleons, as well as axion-like particle dark matter and dark photon dark matter. Its sensitivity potential stems from several hours of storage time, comparably long spin coherence times, and the possibility to trap up to 109 particles in bunches with possibly different state preparations for differential measurements. As a dark matter experiment, it is most sensitive in the mass range of 10−10 to 10−19 eV, where it can potentially probe couplings orders of magnitude below current and proposed laboratory experiments.