Magnetic field uniformity in neutron electric dipole moment experiments

© 2019 American Physical Society. Magnetic-field uniformity is of the utmost importance in experiments to measure the electric dipole moment of the neutron. A general parametrization of the magnetic field in terms of harmonic polynomial modes is proposed, going beyond the linear-gradients approximation. We review the main undesirable effects of nonuniformities: depolarization of ultracold neutrons and Larmor frequency shifts of neutrons and mercury atoms. The theoretical predictions for these effects were verified by dedicated measurements with the single-chamber neutron electric-dipole-moment apparatus installed at the Paul Scherrer Institute. ispartof: Physical Review A vol:99 issue:4 sta…