Accessing interior magnetic field vector components in neutron electric dipole moment experiments via exterior measurements, I. Boundary-value techniques

Abstract: We propose a new concept for determining the interior magnetic field vector components in neutron electric dipole moment experiments. If a closed three-dimensional boundary surface surrounding the fiducial volume of an experiment can be defined such that its interior encloses no currents or sources of magnetization, each of the interior vector field components and the magnetic scalar potential will satisfy a Laplace equation. Therefore, if either the vector field components or the normal derivative of the scalar potential can be measured on the surface of this boundary, thus defining a Dirichlet or Neumann boundary-value problem, respectively, the interior vector field components or the scalar potential (and, thus, the field components via the gradient of the potential) can be uniquely determined via solution of the Laplace equation. We discuss the applicability of this technique to the determination of the interior magnetic field components during the operating phase of neutron electric dipole moment experiments when it is not, in general, feasible to perform direct in situ measurements of the interior field components. We also study the specifications that a vector field probe must satisfy in order to determine the interior vector field components to a certain precision. The technique we propose here may also be applicable to experiments requiring monitoring of the vector magnetic field components within some closed boundary surface, such as searches for neutron-antineutron oscillations along a flight path or measurements in storage rings of the muon anomalous magnetic moment $g-2$ and the proton electric dipole moment.