Status of the Penning trap project in Munich

The MLLTRAP at the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratory (Garching) is a new Penning trap facility designed to combine several novel technologies to decelerate, charge breed, cool, bunch and purify the reaction products and perform high-accuracy nuclear and atomic mass measurements. It is now in the commissioning phase, achieving a mass-resolving power of about 10⁵ in the purification trap for stable ions.     

Signatures of the Unruh effect via high-power, short-pulse lasers

The ultra-high fields of high-power short-pulse lasers are expected to contribute to understanding fundamental properties of the quantum vacuum and quantum theory in very strong fields. For example, the neutral QED vacuum breaks down at the Schwinger field strength of 1.3×10¹⁸ V/m, where a virtual e⁺e^- pair gains its rest mass energy over a Compton wavelength and materializes as a real pair. At such an ultra-high field strength, an electron experiences an acceleration of a_S=2×10²⁸g and hence fundamental phenomena such as the long predicted Unruh effect start to play a role. The Unruh effect implies that the accelerated electron experiences the vacuum as a thermal bath with the Unruh temperature. In its accelerated frame the electron scatters photons off the thermal bath, corresponding to the emission of an entangled pair of photons in the laboratory frame. While it remains an experimental challenge to reach the critical Schwinger field strength within the immediate future even in view of the enormous thrust in high-power laser developments in recent years, the near-future laser technology may allow to probe the signatures of the Unruh effect mentioned above. Using a laser-accelerated electron beam (γ～300) and a counter-propagating laser beam acting as optical undulator should allow to create entangled Unruh photon pairs (i.e., signatures of the Unruh effect) with energies of the order of several hundred keV. An even substantially improved experimental scenario can be realized by using a brilliant 20 keV photon beam as X-ray undulator together with a low-energy (γ≈2) electron beam. In this case the separation of the Unruh photon pairs from background originating from linearly accelerated electrons (classical Larmor radiation) is significantly improved. Detection of the Unruh photons may be envisaged by Compton polarimetry in a 2D-segmented position-sensitive germanium detector.     

Status of the SHIPTRAP Project: A Capture and Storage Facility for Heavy Radionuclides fromSHIP

The ion trap facility SHIPTRAP is being set up to deliver very clean and cool beams of singly-charged recoil ions produced at the SHIP velocity filter at GSI Darmstadt. SHIPTRAP consists of a gas cell for stopping and thermalizing high-energy recoil ions from SHIP, an rf ion guide for extraction of the ions from the gas cell, a linear rf trap for accumulation and bunching of the ions, and a Penning trap for isobaric purification. The progress in testing the rf ion guide is reported. A transmission of about 93(5)% was achieved. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

First Measurements with the Gas Cell for SHIPTRAP

SHIPTRAP is an electromagnetic transport and trapping system to provide very clean and cold beams of singly-charged recoil ions from the SHIP facility at GSI. The different components of the system are currently under development in Munich (gas cell and extraction RFQ) and GSI (Buncher RFQ and Penning traps)[1]. Design and manufacturing of the prototype buffer gas cell and the extraction RFQ based on a wide range of simulations have been completed. The results of these simulations together with the first measurements will be reported. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A setup for the search for E0 decay of superdeformed 236U

Transitions between nuclear states with a large deformation difference may have large transition probabilities for E0 decay. Such an E0 decay has been found in the decay of the superdeformed ²³⁸U fission isomer back into the normal-deformed states [1]. However, a search for the E0 back-decay in ²³⁶U showed no result [2]. A setup has been developed to search for conversion electrons in this decay.     

Towards direct mass measurements of nobelium at SHIPTRAP

The Penning-trap mass spectrometer SHIPTRAP allows precision mass measurements of rare isotopes produced in fusion-evaporation reactions. In the first period of operation the masses of more than 50 neutron-deficient radionuclides have been measured. In this paper the perspectives for direct mass measurements of rare isotopes around nobelium are discussed and the achievable precision is addressed. The temporal stability of the magnetic field, an important issue for the long measurement times resulting from the low production rates, was investigated and the time-dependent uncertainty due to magnetic field fluctuations was determined. Based on the present performance direct mass measurements of nobelium isotopes are already feasible. With several technical improvements heavier elements between Z=102–105 will be in reach.     

Mass measurements of neutron-deficient radionuclides near the end-point of the rp-process with SHIPTRAP

Direct mass measurements of nuclides near to the supposed end-point region of the astrophysical rp-process were performed at SHIPTRAP, the Penning trap mass spectrometer at GSI Darmstadt. The masses of 24 nuclides were measured with relative uncertainties between 5 ^. 10^-8 and 2 ^. 10^-7 . Three of them, ¹⁰⁷Sb , ¹¹¹I and ¹¹²I , were determined experimentally for the first time. The data analysis and mass evaluation are presented in detail.