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In order to reach relative uncertainties in mass measurements with Penning traps of 10-10 or better, the temperature variation of the trap and surrounding materials must be kept below 10 mK. Temper ...

We describe a new balloon-borne instrument (PoGOLite) capable of detecting 10% polarisation from 200mCrab point-like sources between 25 and 80keV in one 6 hour flight. Polarisation measurements in the soft gamma-ray band are expected to provide a powerful probe into high-energy emission mechanisms as well as the distribution of magnetic fields, radiation fields and interstellar matter. At present, only exploratory polarisation measurements have been carried out in the soft gamma-ray band. Reduction of the large background produced by cosmic-ray particles has been the biggest challenge. PoGOLite uses Compton scattering and photo-absorption in an array of 217 well-type phoswich detector cells made of plastic and BGO scintillators surrounded by a BGO anticoincidence shield and a thick polyethylene neutron shield. The narrow FOV (1.25msr) obtained with well-type phoswich detector technology and the use of thick background shields enhance the detected S/N ratio. Event selections based on recorded phototube waveforms and Compton kinematics reduce the background to that expected for a 40-100mCrab source between 25 and 50keV. A 6 hour observation on the Crab will differentiate between the Polar Cap/Slot Gap, Outer Gap, and Caustic models with greater than 5 sigma; and also cleanly identify the Compton reflection component in the Cygnus X-1 hard state. The first flight is planned for 2010 and long-duration flights from Sweden to Northern Canada are foreseen thereafter., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables

We report here about measurements of reaction and decay Q values by precise determination of pairs of atomic masses. These were performed with the Penning trap mass spectrometer SMILETRAP. Measurements with Penning traps give reliable and accurate masses, in particular Q values, due to the fact that certain systematic errors to a great deal cancel in the mass difference between the two atoms defining the Q value. Some Q values that are of fundamental interest will be discussed here, for example, a new Q value for the 6Li (n,γ) 7Li reaction, for the β-decay of tritium, related to properties of the electron neutrino mass, and for the neutrino-less double β-decay of 76Ge, related to the question of whether the neutrino is a Majorana particle or not. In case of the latter two we report the most accurate Q values, namely 18,589.8(12) eV for the tritium decay and 2,038.997(46) keV for the neutrino-less double β-decay of 76Ge.

The Penning trap mass spectrometer SMILETRAP is designed for precision mass measurements using the merits of highly charged ions. In this paper we describe the feature of SMILETRAP and give example ...

Externally, in an electron beam ion trap, generated Ar16+ ions were retrapped in a Penning trap and evaporatively cooled in their axial motion. The cooling was observed by a novel extraction technique based on the excitation of a coherent axial oscillation which yields short ion bunches of well-defined energies. The initial temperature of the ion cloud was decreased by a factor of more than 140 within 1 s, while the phase-space density of the coldest extracted ion pulses was increased by a factor of up to about 9.

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).

We determine the cyclotron frequency ratio of H2+ and D+, applying the two-pulse Ramsey-excitation technique in the Penning-trap mass spectrometer SMILETRAP. The final result, based on probing more ...

In this paper we describe the features of the SMILETRAP Penning trap mass spectrometer and give examples of recently performed precision mass measurements. SMILETRAP is designed for precision mass ...

A high-accuracy mass measurement of $^{7}\mathrm{Li}$ was performed with the SMILETRAP Penning-trap mass spectrometer via a cyclotron frequency comparison of $^{7}\mathrm{Li}^{3+}$ and $\mathrm{H}_{2}{}^{+}$. A new atomic-mass value of $^{7}\mathrm{Li}$ has been determined to be $7.016\text{ }003\text{ }425\text{ }6(45)\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{u}$ with a relative uncertainty of 0.63 ppb. It has uncovered a discrepancy as large as $14\ensuremath{\sigma}$ ($1.1\text{ }\text{ }\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{u}$) deviation relative to the literature value given in the Atomic-Mass Evaluation AME 2003. The importance of the improved and revised $^{7}\mathrm{Li}$ mass value, for calibration purposes in nuclear-charge radii and atomic-mass measurements of the neutron halos $^{9}\mathrm{Li}$ and $^{11}\mathrm{Li}$, is discussed.

An emittance meter for pulsed, low-energy ion beams was developed. Based on the pepperpot method, the device is compact and portable. It has been installed at the S-EBIT Laboratory at AlbaNova, Stockholm University, to measure the emittance of highly charged ions extracted from the electron beam ion trap R-EBIT and the cooling trap of the high-precision Penning trap mass spectrometer SMILETRAP II. Using a fast delay-line anode detector, the emittance and time-of-flight of the extracted ions can be measured simultaneously. In this paper, design and data processing system are described and preliminary results are presented.

We describe a refrigerated EBIT (R-EBIT) commissioned at the AlbaNova Research Center at Stockholm University. As an innovative solution, the superconducting magnet and the trapping drift tubes of the R-EBIT are cooled to a temperature of 4 K by a set of two cooling heads connected to helium compressors. This dry, i.e. liquid helium and liquid nitrogen free, system is easily operated and creates highly charged ions at a fraction of the cost of traditional liquid-cooled systems. A pulsed and continuous gas injection system was developed to feed neutral particles into the electron beam in the trap region. This improves significantly the highly charged ion production and R-EBIT performance. Fast extraction of ions from the R-EBIT yields very short ( < 100 ns), charge-separated ion bunches which can be either analysed using a straight time-of-flight section or sent to experimental beam lines following selection in a bending magnet. An emittance meter was used to measure the emittance of the ions extracted from the R-EBIT. The extracted ions were also re-trapped in a cylindrical Penning trap and properties of the re-trapped ions have been measured using the emittance meter. Results of these measurements are reported in this publication.

The Ramsey excitation method for high-precision mass-measurements of highly-charged ions has been investigated and benchmarked using H2+ ions in the Penning-trap mass-spectrometer SMILETRAP. The reason for using H2+ ions are their high cyclotron frequency which is typical for the highly-charged ions usually used at SMILETRAP. Two-, three- and four-pulse Ramsey excitation data are analyzed with the help of recent theoretical work and are compared with the previously used single-pulse excitation data. An improvement factor of 2.9 in the statistical uncertainty is achieved. Furthermore the mass of 76Se, included in the previous Q-value measurement of the 76Ge neutrinoless double beta decay, is checked using 76Se25+ ions and a three-pulse Ramsey excitation. The results show a convincing agreement with the measurement when using single-pulse excitation and therefore our Q-value of 2039.006(50) keV, performed with single-pulse excitation, is confirmed.