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TITAN (TRIUMF's Ion Traps for Atomic and Nuclear science) is an online facility designed to carry out high-precision mass measurements on singly and highly charged radioactive ions. The TITAN Penning trap has been built and optimized in order to perform such measurements with an accuracy in the sub ppb-range. A detailed characterization of the TITAN Penning trap is presented and a new compensation method is derived and demonstrated, verifying the performance in the range of sub-ppb., 33 pages, 16 figures

Nuclear ground state properties including mass, charge radii, spins and moments can be determined by applying atomic physics techniques such as Penning-trap based mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy. The MATS and LaSpec setups at the low-energy beamline at FAIR will allow us to extend the knowledge of these properties further into the region far from stability. The mass and its inherent connection with the nuclear binding energy is a fundamental property of a nuclide, a unique “fingerprint”. Thus, precise mass values are important for a variety of applications, ranging from nuclear-structure studies like the investigation of shell closures and the onset of deformation, tests of nuclear mass models and mass formulas, to tests of the weak interaction and of the Standard Model. The required relative accuracy ranges from 10−5 to below 10−8 for radionuclides, which most often have half-lives well below 1 s. Substantial progress in Penning trap mass spectrometry has made this method a prime choice for precision measurements on rare isotopes. The technique has the potential to provide high accuracy and sensitivity even for very short-lived nuclides. Furthermore, ion traps can be used for precision decay studies and offer advantages over existing methods. With MATS (Precision Measurements of very short-lived nuclei using an A_dvanced Trapping System for highly-charged ions) at FAIR we aim to apply several techniques to very short-lived radionuclides: High-accuracy mass measurements, in-trap conversion electron and alpha spectroscopy, and trap-assisted spectroscopy. The experimental setup of MATS is a unique combination of an electron beam ion trap for charge breeding, ion traps for beam preparation, and a high-precision Penning trap system for mass measurements and decay studies. For the mass measurements, MATS offers both a high accuracy and a high sensitivity. A relative mass uncertainty of 10−9 can be reached by employing highly-charged ions and a non-destructive Fourier-Transform Ion-Cyclotron-Resonance (FT-ICR) detection technique on single stored ions. This accuracy limit is important for fundamental interaction tests, but also allows for the study of the fine structure of the nuclear mass surface with unprecedented accuracy, whenever required. The use of the FT-ICR technique provides true single ion sensitivity. This is essential to access isotopes that are produced with minimum rates which are very often the most interesting ones. Instead of pushing for highest accuracy, the high charge state of the ions can also be used to reduce the storage time of the ions, hence making measurements on even shorter-lived isotopes possible. Decay studies in ion traps will become possible with MATS. Novel spectroscopic tools for in-trap high-resolution conversion-electron and charged-particle spectroscopy from carrier-free sources will be developed, aiming e.g. at the measurements of quadrupole moments and E0 strengths. With the possibility of both high-accuracy mass measurements of the shortest-lived isotopes and decay studies, the high sensitivity and accuracy potential of MATS is ideally suited for the study of very exotic nuclides that will only be produced at the FAIR facility.Laser spectroscopy of radioactive isotopes and isomers is an efficient and model-independent approach for the determination of nuclear ground and isomeric state properties. Hyperfine structures and isotope shifts in electronic transitions exhibit readily accessible information on the nuclear spin, magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole moments as well as root-mean-square charge radii. The dependencies of the hyperfine splitting and isotope shift on the nuclear moments and mean square nuclear charge radii are well known and the theoretical framework for the extraction of nuclear parameters is well established. These extracted parameters provide fundamental information on the structure of nuclei at the limits of stability. Vital information on both bulk and valence nuclear properties are derived and an exceptional sensitivity to changes in nuclear deformation is achieved. Laser spectroscopy provides the only mechanism for such studies in exotic systems and uniquely facilitates these studies in a model-independent manner.The accuracy of laser-spectroscopic-determined nuclear properties is very high. Requirements concerning production rates are moderate; collinear spectroscopy has been performed with production rates as few as 100 ions per second and laser-desorption resonance ionization mass spectroscopy (combined with β-delayed neutron detection) has been achieved with rates of only a few atoms per second.This Technical Design Report describes a new Penning trap mass spectrometry setup as well as a number of complementary experimental devices for laser spectroscopy, which will provide a complete system with respect to the physics and isotopes that can be studied. Since MATS and LaSpec require high-quality low-energy beams, the two collaborations have a common beamline to stop the radioactive beam of in-flight produced isotopes and prepare them in a suitable way for transfer to the MATS and LaSpec setups, respectively., This manuscript has been acomplished by the contributions from several members of the MATS and LaSpec collaborations. All the contributions are acknowledged and without them this document would not exist. We also acknowledge support from the Max-Planck Society as well as from several funding agencies in Spain which provided economical support for the organization of the 3rd LaSpec-MATS collaboration meeting held in Matalascañas (Huelva) in October 2008. This meeting served to fix the TDR contents. These funding agencies are Junta de Andalucía and CPAN (Centro Nacional de Partículas Astropartículas y Nuclear).

Penning trap mass measurements of 9 Be, 10 Be ( t 1 / 2 = 1.51 My ), and the one-neutron halo nuclide 11 Be ( t 1 / 2 = 13.8 s ) have been performed using TITAN at TRIUMF. The resulting 11 Be mass excess ( ME = 20 177.60 ( 58 ) keV ) is in agreement with the current Atomic Mass Evaluation (AME03) [G. Audi, et al., Nucl. Phys. A 729 (2003) 337] value, but is over an order of magnitude more precise. The precision of the mass values of 9,10 Be have been improved by about a factor of four and reveal a ≈ 2 σ deviation from the AME mass values. Results of new atomic physics calculations are presented for the isotope shift of 11 Be relative to 9 Be, and it is shown that the new mass values essentially remove atomic mass uncertainties as a contributing factor in determining the relative nuclear charge radius from the isotope shift. The new mass values of 10,11 Be also allow for a more precise determination of the single-neutron binding energy of the halo neutron in 11 Be.

A high-precision Penning trap mass measurement of the exotic $^{8}\mathrm{He}$ nuclide (${T}_{1/2}=119\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{ms}$) has been carried out resulting in a reduction of the uncertainty of the halo binding energy by over an order of magnitude. The new mass, determined with a relative uncertainty of $9.2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}8}$ ($\ensuremath{\delta}m=690\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{eV}$) is 13 keV less bound than the previously accepted value. The mass measurement is of great relevance for the recent charge-radius measurement of $^{8}\mathrm{He}$ [P. Mueller et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 252501 (2007).]. The $^{8}\mathrm{He}$ mass is the first result from the newly-commissioned Penning trap: TITAN (TRIUMF's Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear science) at the ISAC (Isotope Separator and Accelerator) radioactive beam facility at TRIUMF.