Development of Ultracold Francium Atomic Sources Towards the Permanent EDM Search

• Published in: Few-body systems Vol. 63; no. 1
• Main Authors: Hayamizu, Tomohiro, Haba, Hiromitsu, Nakamura, Keisuke, Aoki, Takatoshi, Nagahama, Hiroki, Tanaka, Kazuo S., Ozawa, Naoya, Ohtsuka, Miki, Sakemi, Yasuhiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 01.03.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Advances on the Few-Body Problem in Physics – Selected and Refereed papers from the 8th Asia-Pacific Conference; Atomic; Decay; Dipole moments; Electric dipoles; Electric fields; Francium; Gold; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Ion beams; Ion bombardment; Laser cooling; Molecular; Nuclear Physics; Optical and Plasma Physics; Particle and Nuclear Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy
• ISSN: 0177-7963; 1432-5411
• DOI: 10.1007/s00601-021-01710-4

Francium (Fr), which is the alkali atom in the 7th period, can be obtained as ultracold atoms with laser cooling and trapping techniques, and could be employed for the experiments on searches for the permanent electric dipole moment (EDM) of an electron. In order to improve the sensitivity of the electron EDM search, development of a high-intensity source of Fr atoms is essential. We demonstrated a production of a high intensity 210 Fr ion beam with a rate of 5 × 10 6 ions/s by a fusion reaction with bombardment of an accelerated 18 O beam onto a fixed gold target in RIKEN. The Fr products inside the gold target were extracted from the gold surface as an ion beam focused with an electrostatic field. We also discussed the method to produce 221 Fr by α -decay of 225 Ac. A neutron-rich 221 Fr isotope can be obtained as a daughter nucleus of this decay.