Laser Trapping of Polarized Radioactive Sodium
Abstract
We report on the development of highly polarized trapped radioactive ^21Na to be used for beta-decay experiments. After going through a Zeeman slower, a thermal beam of ^21Na atoms produced at the 88-inch cyclotron of Berkeley Lab is loaded into a standard magneto-optical trap. A circularly polarized and focused off-resonant laser beam is then used to trap and polarize the atoms to the stretched hyperfine ground state. We will report on the results of precision polarimetry, which is critical for the measurement of beta-decay correlations associated with the nuclear spin in the beta-decay of ^21Na. We will also present the most recent analysis of our data on the (unpolarized nucleus) beta-neutrino correlation measurement.
- Publication:
-
APS Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003APS..DMP.D1008K