Searching for an Anomalous Spin Interaction: Set Up and Preliminary Data Collection

Abstract

Recent theoretical advances and observations that the Standard Model is incomplete have indicated the possibility that there are other macroscopic interactions that are mediated by bosons either with a mass too small or too large, which have not yet been accounted for. Among these possible mediating particles is the possible existence of spin-dependent interactions, mediated by either scalar or vector bosons. These potential interactions should have very low signature since they have not been observed to date. In this senior thesis, we set up an experiment to search for such interactions. In our experimental setup, we have a magnet shielded to a few G in magnitude using the passive shielding of three layers of -metal and the active shielding of a cosine coil separated by approximately 10 cm from a 21Ne-Rb SERF co-magnetometer acting as our spin source. We examine a preliminary sample of signal data read from the co-magnetometer.