Measuring an electron’s magnetic moment with extreme accuracy

• In an astonishing feat of metrology, physicists recently reported measuring the electron’s magnetic moment with a precision of 0.13 parts per trillion (ppt).
• The resulting measurement is 2.2 times more accurate than the previous best, recorded 14 years ago.

The Standard Model

• The Standard Model (SM) is the theory that describes
  • The properties of all subatomic particles,
  • Classifies them into different groups, and
  • Determines how they’re affected by three of the four fundamental forces of nature:
    • Strong-nuclear force,
    • Weak-nuclear force,
    • Electromagnetic force (it can’t explain gravity).

Timeline

• In the 1960s Physicists used SM to predict the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson, which was finally discovered in 2012.
• It allowed physicists to successfully predict the existence and properties of dozens of particles and is considered to be one of the most successful theories in the history of physics.
• However, it still can’t explain why the universe has more matter than antimatter, what dark matter is, or what dark energy is.

How does the electron’s magnetic moment matter?

• The SM’s most precise prediction is of the electron’s magnetic moment.
• Physically, the magnetic moment describes how willing an electron is to align itself in the direction of a magnetic field.
• In the new study, researchers suspended a single electron in a magnetic field at an ultracold temperature inside a vacuum chamber, and measured currents induced in nearby electrodes by the electron’s movement.
• They measured the value of –/B to be 1.00115965218059, within 0.13 ppt.
• They achieved a precise result by closely controlling the electric fields that hold the electron in place, stabilising the magnetic field, and finely adjusting the physical properties of the hardware, thus subtracting the sources of uncertainty that could affect the data.

Implications of the result

• First, the electron and the muon are very similar particles, but the muon is around 207 times heavier.
  • Multiple measurements until 2021 have found that the muon’s magnetic moment disagrees with the SM prediction.
  • If this is the handiwork of beyond-SM forces acting on the particle, their effects should be visible on the electron’s magnetic moment as well.
  • But because the electron is lighter, the effects will be 40,000 times weaker.
  • By achieving such a highly precise result, the new result suggests that the physicists couldn’t find these signs.
• Second, a series of mathematical calculations connect the data that physicists record in an experiment and the value of the electron’s magnetic moment.
  • One of these calculations involves a universal constant that specifies the strength with which an electron couples to the electromagnetic field.
  • Studies published in 2018 and 2020 measured the value of and reached two distinct answers differing by 0.00000016.
  • They should have reached the same answer since is a constant.
  • If this discrepancy is resolved, the physicists’ measurement can test the SM prediction to 10 times more precision.

Will we ever find evidence of beyond-SM forces?

• Physicists will test as many of the SM’s predictions as they can, to the extent they can, to look for a crack in its façade.
• They already have some leads — the SM says neutrinos should be massless, but they aren’t; and of course the muon anomaly.
• Physicists have also built detectors to look for different kinds of hypothetical dark-matter particles, are combing through astronomical data to make sense of dark energy, and are scrutinising each other’s calculations.
• The group that measured the electron’s magnetic moment itself has plans to upgrade its setup and repeat the measurement with the electron’s anti-particle, the positron.
• All together, the community hopes that at least one of these efforts, guided by the principles they uncover in their theoretical studies, will reveal a glimpse of a world beyond the Standard Model.