Towards Characterization of Atomic Beam Sources Using Harvested Isotopes at FRIB for Tests of Fundamental Symmetries

Certain pear-shaped nuclei, such as Radium-225, are predicted to have exquisite sensitivity to beyond Standard Model physics which could explain the near absence of antimatter in the observable Universe. These types of isotopes will be produced in abundance in the water beam dump at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University. There are plans for harvesting a wide variety of isotopes for many different applications at FRIB. Because of their favorable chemical properties, alkaline earth metals such as radium are a good case for harvesting. We aim to characterize the efficiency of forming an atomic beam from harvested isotopes using chemical surrogates for radium such as calcium or barium. A radium atomic beam is currently used to load the magneto-optical trap used in the search for the permanent atomic electric dipole moment of radium. We will report on our plans to characterize these types of atomic beams using laser-induced fluorescence.