0000000000527954
AUTHOR
H.j. Maier
Preparation of targets for the gas-filled recoil separator TASCA by electrochemical deposition and design of the TASCA target wheel assembly
Abstract The Transactinide Separator and Chemistry Apparatus (TASCA) is a recoil separator with maximized transmission designed for performing advanced chemical studies as well as nuclear reaction and structure investigations of the transactinide elements ( Z >103) on a one-atom-at-a-time basis. TASCA will provide a very clean transactinide fraction with negligible contamination of lighter elements from nuclear side reactions in the target. For TASCA a new target chamber was designed and built at GSI including the rotating target wheel assembly ARTESIA for beam intensities up to 2 μA (particle). For the production of longer-lived isotopes of neutron-rich heavier actinide and transactinide e…
Direct detection of the elusive 229thorium isomer: Milestone towards a nuclear clock
Recently, the first direct detection of the long-searched low-lying isomeric first excited state of 229Th could be realized via its internal conversion decay branch, which confirms the isomer's existence and lays the foundation for precise studies of its decay parameters, in particular its half-life and excitation energy. Follow-up studies confirmed the theoretically expected lifetime reduction by about 109 of neutral 229mTh compared to charged isomers with τ∼10 μS thus emphasizing the need to efficiently suppress internal conversion when aiming for the detection of a potential photonic decay branch of 229mTh. Work towards precisely determining the excitation energy of the thorium isomer is…