Ion beam coolers in nuclear physics

2003

Cooling techniques for low-energy radioactive ion beams are reviewed together with applications on high-precision measurements of ground state properties of exotic nuclei. The emphasis in the presentation is on cooling, bunching and improving the overall characteristics of ion beams by RFQ-driven buffer gas cooling devices. Application of cooled and bunched beams in collinear laser spectroscopy to extract isotope shifts and hyperfine structure are presented with examples on radioactive Ti, Zr and Hf isotopes. The impact of the new-generation coolers on mass measurements of short-lived nuclei is discussed with examples on precision measurements of masses of super-allowed beta emitters. As a …