Mass and lifetime measurements lead to the discovery and understanding of basic properties of matter. The isotopic nature of the chemical elements, nuclear binding, and the location and strength of nuclear shells are the most outstanding examples leading to the development of the first nuclear models. More recent are the discoveries of new structures of nuclides far from the valley of stability. A new generation of direct mass measurements which allows the exploration of extended areas of the nuclear mass surface with high accuracy has been opened up with the combination of the Experimental Storage Ring ESR and the FRragment Separator FRS at GSI Darmstadt. In-flight separated nuclei are stored in the ring. Their masses are directly determined from the revolution frequency. Dependent on the half-life two complementary methods are applied. Schottky Mass Spectrometry SMS relies on the measurement of the revolution frequency of electron cooled stored ions. The cooling time determines the lower half-life limit to the order of seconds. For Isochronous Mass Spectrometry IMS the ring is operated in an isochronous ion-optical mode. The revolution frequency of the individual ions coasting in the ring is measured using a time-of-flight method. Nuclides with lifetimes down to microseconds become accessible. With SMS masses of several hundreds nuclides have been measured simultaneously with an accuracy in the 2 x 10(-7)-range. This high accuracy and the ability to study large areas of the mass surface are ideal tools to discover new nuclear structure properties and to guide improvements for theoretical mass models. In addition, nuclear half-lives of stored bare and highly charged ions have been measured. This new experimental development is a significant progress since nuclear decay characteristics are mostly known for neutral atoms. For bare and highly charged ions new nuclear decay modes become possible, such as bound-state beta decay. Dramatic changes in the nuclear lifetime have been observed in highly charged ions compared to neutral atoms due to blocking of nuclear decay channels caused by the modified atomic interaction. High ionization degrees prevail in hot stellar matter and thus these experiments have great relevance for the understanding of the synthesis of elements in the universe and astrophysical scenarios in general.

Mass and lifetime measurements of exotic nuclei in storage rings

Mass measurement of cooled neutron-deficient bismuth projectile fragments with time-resolved Schottky mass spectrometry at the FRS-ESR facility

Beta decay of highly charged ions has attracted much attention in recent years. An obvious motivation for this research is that stellar nucleosynthesis proceeds at high temperatures where the involved atoms are highly ionized. Another important reason is addressing decays of well-defined quantum-mechanical systems, such as one-electron ions where all interactions with other electrons are excluded. The largest modifications of nuclear half-lives with respect to neutral atoms have been observed in beta decay of highly charged ions. These studies can be performed solely at ion storage rings and ion traps, because there high atomic charge states can be preserved for extended periods of time (up to several hours). Currently, all experimental results available in this field originate from experiments at the heavy-ion complex GSI in Darmstadt. There, the fragment separator facility FRS allows the production and separation of exotic, highly charged nuclides, which can then be stored and investigated in the storage ring facility ESR. In this review, we present and discuss in particular two-body beta decays, namely bound-state beta decay and orbital electron capture. Although we focus on experiments conducted at GSI, we will also attempt to provide general requirements common to any other experiment in this context. Finally, we address challenging but not yet performed experiments and we give prospects for the new radioactive beam facilities, such as FAIR in Darmstadt, IMP in Lanzhou and RIKEN in Wako.

Beta decay of highly charged ions

A carbon-cluster ion source has been installed and tested
at SHIPTRAP, the Penning-trap mass spectrometer for precision mass
measurements of heavy elements at GSI. Carbon-cluster ions
12Cn
 +, 5 ≤n ≤23, were produced by
laser-induced desorption and ionization from 
a
carbon sample. They
were tested for the first time as reference ions in an on-line mass
measurement of the radionuclides 144Dy, 146Dy and
147Ho. In addition, carbon clusters of various sizes were used
for an investigation of the systematic uncertainty of SHIPTRAP
covering a mass range from 84 u to 240 u. The mass-dependent
uncertainty was found to be negligible for the case of
(m-m ref)< 100 u. However, a systematic uncertainty of 4.5
×10-8 was revealed.

Carbon-cluster mass calibration at SHIPTRAP

A review is presented of stochastic cooling and electron cooling at the CRN ISR as well as at the facility at Fermilab. (AIP).

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.ns.31.120181.001455

K. Huebner

Papers

Non-destructive diagnostics of coasting beams with Schottky noise