Many-body theory of the electric dipole moment of atomic ytterbium

Abstract

The existence of the permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of an atom implies the simultaneous violation of parity and time-reversal symmetries. Two experiments based on laser cooling have been proposed to search for the EDM of atomic ytterbium. We propose three different relativistic many-body approaches to calculate the EDM of atoms with strongly interacting configurations. Two of them are based on the configuration-interaction method and the third is an algebraic many-body perturbation theory that explicitly uses configuration state functions. We use these three approaches to calculate the EDM of atomic ytterbium arising from an electron-nucleus tensor-pseudotensor interaction. The results of these calculations are in excellent agreement with each other.