The neutron and its role in cosmology and particle physics

Understand

Experiments with cold and ultracold neutrons have reached a level of precision such that problems far beyond the scale of the present Standard Model of particle physics become accessible to experimental investigation.

• Due to the close links between particle physics and cosmology, these studies also permit a deep look into the very first instances of our universe.
• First addressed in this article, both in theory and experiment, is the problem of baryogenesis ...
• The question how baryogenesis could have happened is open to experimental tests, and it turns out that this problem can be curbed by the very stringent limits on an electric dipole moment of the neutron, a quantity that also has deep implications for particle physics.