EQuAL Seminar: Roy Ready

"Laser Cooling and Trapping of Short-Lived Radium Isotopes"

Radium-225 (15-day half-life) has a pear-shaped nucleus with spin and its electronic state can be controlled with wavelengths that can be produced directly from laser diodes. These features make radium-225 an excellent candidate for testing fundamental symmetries, especially as part of a molecule, and technologies based on highly controlled atoms such as optical clocks. Recently we benchmarked an oven for trace radium isotopes with a thorium source that continuously produces radium via nuclear decay. We photoionized, trapped, and laser-cooled radium-224 and radium-225 ions with this mechanism. We are making measurements of laser-cooled radium-225 ions to support using it in an optical clock. In parallel, we are designing a higher efficiency, orthotropic oven and a cryogenic chamber for trapping radium molecules.