Progress on the measurement of the francium anapole moment

We present the current status of the experimental effort towards the measurement of the anapole moment in francium. The anapole is a parity violating, time-reversal conserving nuclear moment that arises from the weak interaction among nucleons. The anapole moment is nuclear spin dependent (nsd) and sensitive to the configuration of nuclear structure. Our experimental scheme is to perform a direct measurement of the nsd parity violation, by driving a parity forbidden E1 transition between hyperfine ground states in a series of francium isotopes inside a blue detuned dipole trap at the electric anti-node of a microwave cavity. We explore theoretical aspects and experimental requirements on the possible tests using rubidium isotopes. The experiment will be at the ISAC radioactive beam facility of TRIUMF. Work supported by NSF and DOE USA, NSERC and NRC Canada, CONACYT Mexico.