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Production and trapping of Na isotopes for beta-decay studies

(2007) Rogachevskiy, Andrey Valerievich

TRImP is a new facility at KVI, which is presently being completed. The acronym TRImP stands for Trapped Radioactive Isotopes: micro-laboratories for fundamental physics. The Standard Model (SM) quantitatively describes the electroweak and strong interactions. It is agrees very well with experimental data to date. However, questions can be raised. For example the amount of matter and antimatter is not the same in our universe etc. Among the objectives of the TRImP project are the study of the beta-decay of radioactive atoms and a search for a possible electrical dipole moment. Both topics could improve the limits of the SM or find physics beyond the SM.

This thesis concerns the preparations for precision beta-decay studies. Historically, beta-decay studies played an important role in the development of the weak interaction theory. At the current limits for deviations of the SM such studies can only give a new limit using special techniques in order to reach the required precision. The work of this thesis is concentrated around two important aspects of the beta-decay project: the optimal production of the Na21 isotope and the trapping of these particles for the beta-decay experiment. The isotope Na21 is chosen, because it has a large physics potential and it is experimentally well accessible.