New techniques for measuring atomic parity violation

Atomic Parity Non-Conservation (PNC) experiments are complimentary to high-energy particle physics experiments and have potential to detect physics beyond the Standard Model, such as extra gauge bosons. The Standard Model of the electroweak interaction predicts parity non-conserving transition amplitudes, such as $E1PNC$, in atoms. Measurements of $E1PNC$ in thallium are consistent with the Standard Model predictions. But in cesium the single most precise result is highly suggestive of an additional gauge boson. New experiments with independent sources of uncertainty are needed to confirm this departure from Standard Model predictions.; This dissertation explores several new atomic PNC experiments. This research started with an effort to improve the $M1-E1PNC$ optical rotation experiments on the thallium $6P1/2\to 6P3/2$ transition by using electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) to address systematic sources of uncertainty which limited previous optical rotation experiments. An experimental study of EIT in thallium is presented, with data and models for transmission and optical rotation in the presence of EIT. EIT is a new method of sub-Doppler spectroscopy, which uses a two-laser nonlinear process. Using chopped optical beams and lock-in detection, EIT can help make a variety of precision measurements of atomic properties including PNC.; To extend this technique to cesium, where the accuracy of atomic structure calculations permits the most critical tests of the Standard Model by atomic PNC, I considered the effect of EIT on an E2-$E1PNC$ optical rotation signal. An analysis of angular momentum factors for PNC on an E2 transition is presented, along with EIT models for cesium vapor on the $6S1/2\to 5D3/2$ probe transition. This transition should have slightly larger E1PNC but uncorrelated atomic structure uncertainties compared to the $6S1/2\to 7S1/2$ transition on which the most accurate atomic PNC experiment was recently performed. I also propose a Stark-interference atomic PNC experiment on this E2 transition which uses a novel method to suppress systematic errors.