Commissioning of the Francium Trapping Facility at TRIUMF

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 $^{207}$Fr, $^{209}$Fr and $^{221}$Fr, with a maximum of $2.5 \times 10^5$ $^{209}$Fr atoms. The neutral cold atoms will be used in studies of the weak interaction through measurements of atomic parity non-conservation.

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