0000000000514954
AUTHOR
Oliver Kaleja
Opportunities and limitations of in-gas-cell laser spectroscopy of the heaviest elements with RADRIS
International audience; The radiation detection resonance ionization spectroscopy (RADRIS) technique enables laser spectroscopic investigations of the heaviest elements which are produced in atom-at-a-time quantities from fusion-evaporation reactions. To achieve a high efficiency, laser spectroscopy is performed in a buffer-gas environment used to thermalize and stop the high-energy evaporation residues behind the velocity filter SHIP. The required cyclic measurement procedure in combination with the applied filament collection for neutralization as well as confinement of the stopped ions and subsequent pulse-heat desorption constrains the applicability of the technique. Here, some of these…
Advancing Radiation-Detected Resonance Ionization towards Heavier Elements and More Exotic Nuclides
Atoms 10(2), 41 (2022). doi:10.3390/atoms10020041
Atom-at-a-time laser resonance ionization spectroscopy of nobelium
Resonance ionization spectroscopy of nobelium (atomic number 102) reveals its ground-state transition and an upper limit for its ionization potential, paving the way to characterizing even heavier elements via optical spectroscopy. Characterizing the heaviest elements in the periodic table is a gruelling task because they are radioactive, exist only for split seconds at a time and need to be artificially produced in sufficient quantities by complicated procedures. The heaviest element that has been characterized by optical spectroscopy is fermium, which has an atomic number of 100. Mustapha Laatiaoui et al. extend the methods used for fermium to perform optical spectroscopy on nobelium (ato…
The TRAPSENSOR facility: an open-ring 7 tesla Penning trap for laserbased precision experiments
APenning-trap facility for high-precision mass spectrometry based on a novel detection method has been built. This method consists in measuring motional frequencies of singly-charged ions trapped in strong magnetic fields through the fluorescence photons from laser-cooled 40Ca+ ions, to overcome limitations faced in electronic single-ion detection techniques. The key element of this facility is an open-ring Penning trap coupled upstream to a preparation Penning trap similar to those used at Radioactive Ion Beam facilities. Here we present a full characterization of the trap and demonstrate motional frequency measurements of trapped ions stored by applying external radiofrequency fields in r…
Impact of buffer gas quenching on the $^1S_0$ $\to$ $^1P_1$ ground-state atomic transition in nobelium
International audience; Using the sensitive Radiation Detected Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (RADRIS) techniquean optical transition in neutral nobelium (No, Z = 102) was identified. A remnant signal when delaying the ionizing laser indicated the influence of a strong buffer gas induced de-excitation of the optically populated level. A subsequent investigation of the chemical homologue, ytterbium (Yb, Z = 70), enabled a detailed study of the atomic levels involved in this process, leading to the development of a rate equation model. This paves the way for characterizing resonance ionization spectroscopy (RIS) schemes used in the studyof nobelium and beyond, where atomic properties are c…