Solid deuterium and UCN factory: application to the neutron electric dipole moment measurement

Present experiments which search for an electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron use ultra-cold neutrons (UCN) and are limited by counting statistics. One way to solve this problem is to improve the source of UCN. The present article briefly reviews two possibilities which employ solid deuterium at the temperature of liquid helium. The possibility of installing a solid deuterium UCN source at the FRM-II reactor and at spallation neutron sources at PSI, LANL and KEK is discussed. An increase of the UCN density up to the level of 103–104 cm−3 is expected. Compared to existing sources, this corresponds to an improvement by two to three orders of magnitude. Such experimental facilities will make it possible to improve measurements of the EDM of the neutron down to the level of 10−27 e cm.