An improved measurement of the ground state tensor polarizability of the Cesium atom

We have constructed an apparatus to measure the ground state tensor polarizability (GSTP) of Cesium using direct transitions between magnetic sublevels of cold atoms trapped in optical lattices. Our improved Cs GSTP measurement provides a check on the atomic calculations needed to extract the electro-weak physics from atomic parity violation (APV) experiments. This is the first measurement of the GSTP of the F = 3 state and we are nearing a fractional uncertainty better than , 60 times better than the best previous measurement of the GSTP of the F = 4 state.