This was a contributed talk I gave at the Mini-Symposium on Precision Measurements at Low Energies, a collaboration between FRIB and the CNRS Nuclei and Particles laboratories to share ideas and explore possibilities for collaboration that took place at FRIB from March 13 – 15, 2025. My talk was 30 minutes in length with 10 minutes for questions. In preparation for my talk and in the spirit of the symposium, I read through several publications for each of the confirmed attendees who were members of the CNRS laboratories. This literature review experience was very fun to do and I feel like it culminated in a nice slide at the beginning of my talk which attempted to celebrate the ongoing work of the audience members who were in the room at the time. During the symposium I also had a chance to speak with one of the visiting scientists, Antoine De Roubin, with whom I had a fruitful discussion about the frustrations of operating an atmospheric electrospray source. It turns out that Antoine had experience with electrospray as it was a topic he explored in his PhD thesis – he also shared a with me on the application of electrospray ionization with an RF-carpet for heavier species in the trans-uranium region, which might be relevant to our interest in alkaline-earth monofluorides such as radium monofluoride.
Also occurring this same weekend was a total lunar eclipse, which I was very excited about viewing with my new telescope at the time. I managed to get a few good pictures, one of which is shown above in this post!
-Aiden Boyer