Measurability of Nuclear Electric Dipole Moments

The possibility of measuring a very small nuclear electric dipole moment is explored by calculating the interaction of this moment with an external electric field. It is shown that for a quantum system of point, charged, electric dipoles in an external electrostatic potential of arbitrary form, there is complete shielding; i.e., there is no term in the interaction energy that is of first order in the electric dipole moments, regardless of the magnitude of the external potential. This is true even if the particles are of finite size, provided that the charge and dipole moment of each have the same spatial distribution. Relativistic and second-order effects are uninterestingly small. There is, however, a first-order interaction if the charge and moment distributions are different, and also for a point electric dipole if it also carries a magnetic dipole moment. Explicit calculations of both effects are given for hydrogen and helium atoms. It is found that the effective electric field at a ${\mathrm{He}}^{3}$ nucleus arising from the magnetic dipole effect is about a hundred times that arising from the finite size effect, and is roughly ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$ times the external electric field.