We report on the successful commissioning of the Francium Trapping Facility at TRIUMF. Large laser-cooled samples of francium are produced from a francium ion beam delivered by the ISAC radioactive ion beam facility. The ion beam is neutralized on an yttrium foil, which is subsequently heated to transfer the atoms into the magneto-optical trapping region. We have successfully trapped 207Fr, 209Fr and 221Fr, with a maximum of 2.5×105209Fr atoms. The neutral cold atoms will be used in studies of the weak interaction through measurements of atomic parity non-conservation.
@article{arxiv.1312.3562,
title = {Commissioning of the Francium Trapping Facility at TRIUMF},
author = {M. Tandecki and J. Zhang and R. Collister and S. Aubin and J. A. Behr and E. Gomez and G. Gwinner and L. A. Orozco and M. R. Pearson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.3562},
year = {2014}
}