Simon Sels

At radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities, ions of short-lived radionuclides are cooled and bunched in buffer-gas-filled Paul traps to improve the ion-beam quality for subsequent experiments. To deliver even colder ions, beneficial to RIB experiments' sensitivity or accuracy, we employ Doppler and sympathetic cooling in a Paul trap cooler-buncher. The improved emittance of ${\mathrm{Mg}}^{+}$, ${\mathrm{K}}^{+}$, and ${\mathrm{O}}_2^{+}$ ion beams is demonstrated by a reduced time-of-flight spread of the extracted ion bunches with respect to room-temperature buffer-gas cooling. Cooling externally-produced hot ions with energies of at least 7 eV down to a few Kelvin is achieved in a timescale of $O$(100 ms) by combining a low-pressure helium background gas with laser cooling. This is sufficiently short to cool short-lived radioactive ions. As an example of this technique's use for RIB research, the mass-resolving power in a multireflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer is shown to increase by up to a factor of 4.6 with respect to buffer-gas cooling. Simulations show good agreement with the experimental results and guide further improvements and applications. These results open a path to a significant emittance improvement and, thus, unprecedented ion-beam qualities at RIB facilities, achievable with standard equipment readily available. The same method provides opportunities for future high-precision experiments with radioactive cold trapped ions.

We present the first results obtained from the S${}^3$ Low-Energy Branch, the gas cell setup at SPIRAL2-GANIL, which will be installed behind the S${}^3$ spectrometer for atomic and nuclear spectroscopy studies of exotic nuclei. The installation is currently being commissioned offline, with the aim to establish optimum conditions for the operation of the radio frequency quadrupole ion guides, mass separation and ion bunching, providing high-efficiency and low-energy spatial spread for the isotopes of interest. Transmission and mass-resolving power measurements are presented for the different components of the S${}^3$-LEB setup. In addition, a single-longitudinal-mode, injection-locked, pumped pulsed-titanium–sapphire laser system has been recently implemented and is used for the first proof-of-principle measurements in an offline laser laboratory. Laser spectroscopy measurements of erbium, which is the commissioning case of the S${}^3$ spectrometer, are presented using the $4f^{12}6s^2$${}^3{H}_6\to 4f^{12}{(}^{3}H)6s6p$ optical transition.

Combining laser spectroscopy in a Versatile Arc Discharge and Laser Ion Source (VADLIS) with Penning-trap mass spectrometry at the CERN-ISOLDE facility, this work reports on mean-square charge radii of neutron-rich mercury isotopes across the $N=126$ shell closure, the electromagnetic moments of ${}^{207}\mathrm{Hg}$, and more precise mass values of ${}^{206\text{–}208}\mathrm{Hg}$. The odd-even staggering (OES) of the mean square charge radii and the kink at $N=126$ are analyzed within the framework of covariant density functional theory (CDFT), with comparisons between different functionals to investigate the dependence of the results on the underlying single-particle structure. The observed features are defined predominantly in the particle-hole channel in CDFT, since both are present in the calculations without pairing. However, the magnitude of the kink is still affected by the occupation of the $\nu 1i_{11/2}$ and $\nu 2g_{9/2}$ orbitals with a dependence on the relative energies as well as pairing.

A comprehensive study of the isotope ${}^{178}\mathrm{Au}$ has been made at the CERN-ISOLDE facility, using resonance laser ionization. Two long-lived states in ${}^{178}\mathrm{Au}$ were identified—a low-spin ground state and a high-spin isomer—each of which were produced as pure beams. Using the ISOLTRAP precision Penning trap, the excitation energy of the isomeric state in ${}^{178}\mathrm{Au}$ was determined to be $E^{*}=189\left(14\right)\mathrm{keV}$. The $\alpha$-decay fine structure patterns of the two states were studied using the Windmill decay station, providing information on the low-lying states in the daughter nucleus ${}^{174}\mathrm{Ir}$. Nuclear spin assignments of $I\left({}^{178}\mathrm{Au}^g\right)=(2,3)$ and $I\left({}^{178}\mathrm{Au}^m\right)=(7,8)$ are made based on the observed $\beta$-decay feeding and hyperfine structure intensity patterns. These spin assignments are used for fitting the hyperfine structures of the two states from which values for the magnetic dipole moments are extracted. The extracted moments are compared with calculations using additivity relations to establish the most probable configurations for ${}^{178}\mathrm{Au}^{g,m}$.