Many-body theory of the electric dipole moment of atomic ytterbium

The existence of the permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of an atom implies the simultaneous violation of parity and time-reversal symmetries. Two experiments based on laser cooling have been proposed to search for the EDM of atomic ytterbium. We propose three different relativistic many-body approaches to calculate the EDM of atoms with strongly interacting configurations. Two of them are based on the configuration-interaction method and the third is an algebraic many-body perturbation theory that explicitly uses configuration state functions. We use these three approaches to calculate the EDM of atomic ytterbium arising from an electron-nucleus tensor-pseudotensor interaction. The results of these calculations are in excellent agreement with each other.