Andrei Derevianko at the University of Nevada, Reno

Theoretical Investigations at the Intersection of Atomic Physics and Precision Measurements

Summary

The foundation has supported several projects in theoretical physics. Perhaps the most impactful was the project on transient variation of fundamental constants which, by applying anthropic arguments, established powerful constraints on certain dark matter models. The funds were also used to further computational techniques relevant to probing violation mirror symmetry of nature and to address the impact of recently reported W-boson mass anomaly on the interpretation of atomic parity violation. The foundation funds have been primarily used to support a graduate student, a postdoctoral scholar, and to acquire a powerful multi-core computational server. The server will essentially contribute to a variety of projects for years to come.

Big scientific questions addressed

The anthropic principle implies that life can emerge and be sustained only in a narrow range of values of fundamental constants (FCs). We extended the anthropic arguments to a regime of transient variations of FCs. Such regime is characteristic of clumpy dark matter models where inside the clumps FCs can reach values vastly different from their everyday values. We showed that the passage of such a macroscopic clump through Earth would make Earth uninhabitable. The periodic table of elements is truncated, and water fails to serve as a universal solvent. Anthropic principle enabled us to improve existing astrophysical bounds on certain dark matter model couplings by five orders of magnitude.

Researchers Whose Research Profited from these Funds

1. Di Xiao (graduate student)


2. Hoang Bao Tran Tan (postdoc)


3. Andrei Derevianko, professor of Physics at the University of Nevada, Reno


4. Several other students (both graduate and undergraduate) have benefitted from running their calculations on the server acquired with the foundation funds.

Notable scientific progress was enabled by the CFP Templeton grant?

Perhaps the most impactful was the project on transient variation of fundamental constants which, by applying anthropic arguments, established powerful constraints on certain dark matter models. The funds were also used to further computational techniques relevant to probing violation mirror symmetry of nature and to address the impact of recently reported W-boson mass anomaly on the interpretation of atomic parity violation.

Notable scientific progress that was Triggered, Launched or Enabled that Can be Reasonably Expected in the Next Couple of Years?

We anticipate to fully implement our newly-developed formalism in high-precision calculations of atomic parity violating amplitudes. Our parity-mixed coupled-cluster formalism mitigates several self-consistency problems in previous approaches and is expected to reduce the present theoretical error bar by a factor of two.

Full citations and whether support was properly acknowledged

1. “Parity-mixed coupled-cluster formalism for computing parity-violating amplitudes,” H. B. Tran Tan, Di Xiao, and A. Derevianko, Phys. Rev. A 105, 022803 (2022). CFP support acknowledged.


2. “Implications of W-boson mass anomaly for atomic parity violation,” H. B. Tran Tan, A. Derevianko, Atoms 2022, 10, 149. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/atoms10040149, CFP support acknowledged.


3. “Anthropic constraint on transient variations of fundamental constants,” V.D. Dergachev, H. B. Tran Tan, S. A. Varganov, A. Derevianko, Phys. Rev. Lett., under review, arXiv:2202.04228, CFP support acknowledged.

Resulting publications reasonably expected in the next couple of years

Two papers are being prepared for publication:

1. Hyperfine-induced corrections to the Stark-induced transition polarizability


2. Precision determination of electric dipole matrix elements in atomic cesium