Precision Storage Rings for Electric Dipole Moment Searches: A Tool En Route to Physics Beyond-the-Standard-Model

Electric Dipole Moments (EDM) of particles (leptons, nucleons and light nuclei) are currently deemed one of the best indicators for new physics, i.e. phenomena, which lie outside the Stand-ard Model (SM) of elementary particle physics – so called physics “Beyond-the-Standard-Model” (BSM). Since EDMs of the SM are vanishingly small, a finite permanent EDM would indicate charge-parity symmetry (CP-) violation in addition to the well-known sources of the SM and could explain the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, while an oscillating EDM would hint at a possible Dark Matter (DM) field comprising axions or axion-like particles (ALPs). A new ap-proach exploiting polarized charged particles (proton, deuteron, 3He) in precision storage rings offers the prospect to push current experimental EDM upper limits significantly further includ-ing the possibility of an EDM discovery. In this paper, we describe the scientific background and the steps towards the realization of a precision storage ring, which will make such measure-ments possible.