We recently reported a new measurement of the electron's electric dipolemoment using YbF molecules [Nature 473, 493 (2011)]. Here, we give a moredetailed description of the methods used to make this measurement, along with afuller analysis of the data. We show how our methods isolate the electricdipole moment from imperfections in the experiment that might mimic it. Wedescribe the systematic errors that we discovered, and the small correctionsthat we made to account for these. By making a set of additional measurementswith greatly exaggerated experimental imperfections, we find upper bounds onpossible uncorrected systematic errors which we use to determine the systematicuncertainty in the measurement. We also calculate the size of some systematiceffects that have been important in previous electric dipole momentmeasurements, such as the motional magnetic field effect and the geometricphase, and show them to be negligibly small in the present experiment. Ourresult is consistent with an electric dipole moment of zero, so we provideupper bounds to its size at various confidence levels. Finally, we review theprospects for future improvements in the precision of the experiment.
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