  Certain pear-shaped nuclei are expected to have enhanced sensitivity to
time-reversal and parity-violating interactions originating within the nuclear
medium. In particular, Protactinium-229 is thought to be about 100,000 times
more sensitive than Mercury-199 which currently sets some of the most stringent
limits for these types of interactions. Several challenges would first have to
be addressed in order to take advantage of this discovery potential. First,
there is not currently a significant source of Pa-229 (1.5 day half-life);
however, there are plans to harvest Pa-229 at the Facility for Rare Isotope
Beams at Michigan State University. Second, the spin-5/2 nucleus of Pa-229
limits its coherence time while also making it sensitive to systematic effects
related to local electric field gradients. On the other hand, this also give
Pa-229 an additional source of signal in the form of a magnetic quadrupole
moment (MQM) which violates the same symmetries as an EDM but is not observable
in spin-1/2 systems. Third, in order to compensate for the small atom numbers
and short coherence times, the Pa-229 atoms would have to be probed with
exceptionally large electric and magnetic fields that may be possible if Pa-229
ions are embedded inside an optical crystal. We will describe some aspects of
this concept using the stable Praseodymium-141 isotope as a surrogate which has
the same nuclear spin and similar atomic structure of Pa-229.
