Laser spectroscopy of radioactive atoms and molecules at CRIS-ISOLDE

Precision experiments based on heavy and polar diatomic molecules have been proposed as a promising pathway to pin down the level of fundamental-symmetry violations in the Universe. As the sensitivity to symmetry-violating nuclear, hadronic, and leptonic moments scales with the atomic number of the heavy nucleus in the diatomic molecule, molecules of atoms heavier than Pb are appealing candidates. However, with few exceptions of sufficiently long half-lives, all isotopes heavier than 208Pb are radioactive. The study of radioactive molecules requires their production at specialized radioactive ion beam facilities, and thus even the basic identification of their electronic states is challenging. The Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (CRIS) experiment at ISOLDE, the radioactive ion beam facility at CERN, has successfully performed the first ever spectroscopy of the short-lived radioactive molecules RaF and AcF, which have been proposed as being highly sensitive to the electron's electric dipole moment, the nuclear anapole moment, and the nuclear Schiff moment. In this talk, an overview of the ISOLDE facility and the CRIS experiment will be followed by a summary of recent experiments on radioactive atoms and molecules at CRIS.