WELCOME LETTER

Trapped radioactive atoms present exciting opportunities for the study of fundamental interactions and symmetries. For example, detecting beta decay in a trap can probe the minute experimental signal that originates from possible tensor or scalar terms in the weak interaction. Such scalar or tensor terms affect the angular correlation between a neutrino and an electron in the beta-decay process, thus probing new physics of “beyond-the-standard-model” nature. Such studies require the use of atom and/or ion “traps” where one can study the minute possible deviations from the predictions of the Standard Model of particles in a virtually “single nucleus” environment, without the interference of multiple-scattering and energy and direction loss due to matter effects. Also, the trapped nuclei can be polarized. Detection of ß decay of polarized nuclei provides an extensive research field of the weak interaction.

The main focus of this workshop is to assemble for several days the leading researchers in this field for a detailed and in-depth discussion of the scientific and technological issues that may enable much better precision of such experiments and, together with that,  a better understanding and evaluation of the underlying physics issues. Hence, the main topics of the workshop will be:

  • Theoretical considerations of the Standard Model predictions, especially in light of the recent exciting findings of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN
  • The Weak Interaction, Fundamental Symmetries.
  • Overveiw of the various trapping techniques for RNB’s. Pros, cons and relative merit.
  • Status report and recent results from worldwide laboratories.
  • Traps in complementary fields.
  • Discussion of the WI novel project of an Electorstatic Trap for RNB’s
  • Detection schemes for ions and electrons
  • Monte Carlo simulations
  • Production and extraction of RNB’s of interest to Fundamental Interaction studies