TWO NEW PRECISION MEASUREMENT GRANTS AWARDED FOR FY 2001.

Two new $50 000 NIST Precision Measurement grants have been awarded for fiscal year 2001. The recipients, David P. DeMille of Yale University and Michael V. Romalis of the University of Washington, were selected from an initial group of 27 candidates. NIST sponsors these grants to promote fundamental research in measurement science in U. S. colleges and universities, and to foster contacts between NIST scientists and researchers in the academic community actively engaged in such work.

The aim of DeMille's project, "Search for the Electron Electric Dipole Moment in the a(1) State of PbO," is to use the paramagnetic, metastable excited state a(1) of PbO to search for an electron electric dipole moment (EDM) with a detection limit of [10.sup.-31] e-cm, [10.sup.-4] times the current detection limit of [10.sup.-27] e-cm. This [10.sup.4] improvement will allow DeMille to provide stringent tests of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM), which does not allow a finite EDM, and extensions of the SM such as super symmetry (SUSY), which in fact predict an EDM in the range of DeMilles proposed detection limit. Thus, this project should shed some experimental light on physics beyond the Standard Model--a topic that is currently of the highest priority in the physics community.

The aim of Romalis' project, "A Test of CPT Symmetry Using a New [K-.sup.3] He Self-Compensating Magnetometer," is to perform a high-precision test of combined charge conjugation, parity inversion, and time reversal (CPT) invariance and local Lorentz invariance by comparing the Larmor precession frequencies of potassium (K) and helium 3 ([He.sup.3]) atoms in the same cell as a function of time, i.e., the daily rotation of the Earth about its axis and the movement of the Earth relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation. The experiment will improve the existing tests of these important fundamental symmetries of nature by a factor of 1000 and should provide tests of various theories of quantum gravity, such as string theory, which predict violations of CPT and Lorentz invariance. These theories attempt to treat gravity in the framework of quantum mechanics--a recognized necessity if the picture of the physical world is to be complete and internally consistent.