In this talk I will discuss three Atomic, Molecular and Optical (AMO) experiments where we probe questions of cosmological significance. In the first, we placed a limit on the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron of < 1.7x10^-26 e cm, by taking advantage of the enormous electric fields inside the diatomic molecule PbO. EDMs are predicted by theories such as supersymmetry and could help explain the origin of the matter/antimatter asymmetry of the universe. The second experiment is a proposal with the ALPHA collaboration for matter wave interferometry of antihydrogen. Using far off-resonant laser beamsplitters and a magnetic recycling technique could allow a 10^-3 measurement of the free fall of antihydrogen. The last experiment uses matter wave interferometry to search for the dark energy responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe. We constrain a "fifth force" to < 10^-6g by using cesium atoms as point-like test masses, evading the screening in macroscopic objects which occurs in many theories. Our results are applicable to a large class of dynamical dark energy theories and rule out a significant range of chameleon scalar fields at the dark energy density.

Argonne Physics Division Seminar Schedule