0000000001233786
AUTHOR
Rafael Ferrer
showing 28 related works from this author
Probing Sizes and Shapes of Nobelium Isotopes by Laser Spectroscopy
2018
Until recently, ground-state nuclear moments of the heaviest nuclei could only be inferred from nuclear spectroscopy, where model assumptions are required. Laser spectroscopy in combination with modern atomic structure calculations is now able to probe these moments directly, in a comprehensive and nuclear-model-independent way. Here we report on unique access to the differential mean-square charge radii of ^{252,253,254}No, and therefore to changes in nuclear size and shape. State-of-the-art nuclear density functional calculations describe well the changes in nuclear charge radii in the region of the heavy actinides, indicating an appreciable central depression in the deformed proton densi…
A gas-jet apparatus for high-resolution laser spectroscopy on the heaviest elements at SHIP
2020
© 2019 Elsevier B.V. Laser spectroscopy enables the determination of fundamental atomic and nuclear properties with high precision. In view of the low production rates of the heaviest elements, a high total efficiency is a crucial requirement for any experimental setup to be used in on-line experiments. The setup requires the use of gas stopping techniques to slow down the radionuclides of interest. In previous studies laser spectroscopy was performed inside a gas-filled stopping cell with a limited spectral resolution of a few GHz. Collisional broadening inside stopping cells ultimately limits the precision of laser spectroscopic studies and hampers in particular hyperfine spectroscopy. Th…
Measurement and simulation of the pressure ratio between the two traps of double Penning trap mass spectrometers
2008
Penning traps are ideal tools to perform high-precision mass measurements. For this purpose the cyclotron frequency of the stored charged particles is measured. In case of on-line mass measurements of short-lived nuclides produced at radioactive beam facilities the ions get in general first prepared and cooled by buffer-gas collisions in a preparation trap to reduce their motional amplitudes and are then transported to a precision trap for the cyclotron frequency determination. In modern Penning trap mass spectrometers both traps are placed in the homogeneous region of one superconducting magnet to optimize the transport efficiency. Because the gas pressure inside the precision trap has to …
Developments for resonance ionization laser spectroscopy of the heaviest elements at SHIP
2016
Abstract The experimental determination of atomic levels and the first ionization potential of the heaviest elements ( Z ⩾ 100 ) is key to challenge theoretical predictions and to reveal changes in the atomic shell structure. These elements are only artificially produced in complete-fusion evaporation reactions at on-line facilities such as the GSI in Darmstadt at a rate of, at most, a few atoms per second. Hence, highly sensitive spectroscopic methods are required. Laser spectroscopy is one of the most powerful and valuable tools to investigate atomic properties. In combination with a buffer-gas filled stopping cell, the Radiation Detected Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy (RADRIS) techniq…
Performance of Dye and Ti:sapphire laser systems for laser ionization and spectroscopy studies at S3
2020
The novel and sensitive In-Gas Laser Ionization Spectroscopy (IGLIS) technique enables high-precision laser spectroscopy of the heaviest elements and isotopes very far from stability that are produced in fusion-evaporation reactions at in-flight separators. Powerful and dedicated laser systems are required in these facilities to realize in-gas jet laser spectroscopy with optimal spectral resolution and efficiency. The performance with respect to the requirements for IGLIS studies at the low energy front-end of the Super Separator Spectrometer (S3) at GANIL, France, of Dye and Ti:sapphire laser systems is investigated. In addition, a number of specific experimental cases on key isotopes of t…
TRIGA-SPEC: A setup for mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy at the research reactor TRIGA Mainz
2008
The research reactor TRIGA Mainz is an ideal facility to provide neutron-rich nuclides with production rates sufficiently large for mass spectrometric and laser spectroscopic studies. Within the TRIGA-SPEC project, a Penning trap as well as a beam line for collinear laser spectroscopy are being installed. Several new developments will ensure high sensitivity of the trap setup enabling mass measurements even on a single ion. Besides neutron-rich fission products produced in the reactor, also heavy nuclides such as 235-U or 252-Cf can be investigated for the first time with an off-line ion source. The data provided by the mass measurements will be of interest for astrophysical calculations on…
First Offline Results from the S3 Low-Energy Branch
2022
International audience; We present the first results obtained from the S3 Low-Energy Branch , the gas cell setup at SPIRAL2-GANIL, which will be installed behind the S3 spectrometer for atomic and nuclear spectroscopy studies of exotic nuclei. The installation is currently being commissioned offline, with the aim to establish optimum conditions for the operation of the radio frequency quadrupole ion guides, mass separation and ion bunching, providing high-efficiency and low-energy spatial spread for the isotopes of interest. Transmission and mass-resolving power measurements are presented for the different components of the S3-LEB setup. In addition, a single-longitudinal-mode, injection-lo…
Characterization of Supersonic Gas Jets for High-Resolution Laser Ionization Spectroscopy of Heavy Elements
2018
© 2018 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the »https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/» Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. The method of laser spectroscopy in supersonic gas jets was proposed for high-resolution and high-efficiency in-gas laser ionization and spectroscopy studies of short-lived nuclei. The flow properties of such supersonic gas jets have been characterized under off-line conditions. Planar laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy of s…
Semantic structures of timbre emerging from social and acoustic descriptions of music
2011
The perceptual attributes of timbre have inspired a considerable amount of multidisciplinary research, but because of the complexity of the phenomena, the approach has traditionally been confined to laboratory conditions, much to the detriment of its ecological validity. In this study, we present a purely bottom-up approach for mapping the concepts that emerge from sound qualities. A social media ( http://www.last.fm ) is used to obtain a wide sample of verbal descriptions of music (in the form of tags) that go beyond the commonly studied concept of genre, and from this the underlying semantic structure of this sample is extracted. The structure that is thereby obtained is then evaluated th…
Change in structure between the $I = 1/2$ states in $^{181}$Tl and $^{177,179}$Au
2018
Abstract The first accurate measurements of the α-decay branching ratio and half-life of the I π = 1 / 2 + ground state in 181Tl have been made, along with the first determination of the magnetic moments and I = 1 / 2 spin assignments of the ground states in 177,179Au. The results are discussed within the complementary systematics of the reduced α-decay widths and nuclear g factors of low-lying, I π = 1 / 2 + states in the neutron-deficient lead region. The findings shed light on the unexpected hindrance of the 1 / 2 + → 1 / 2 + , 181Tl → g 177 Aug α decay, which is explained by a mixing of π 3 s 1 / 2 and π 2 d 3 / 2 configurations in 177Aug, whilst 181Tlg remains a near-pure π 3 s 1 / 2 .…
Towards high-resolution laser ionization spectroscopy of the heaviest elements in supersonic gas jet expansion
2017
Resonant laser ionization and spectroscopy are widely used techniques at radioactive ion beam facilities to produce pure beams of exotic nuclei and measure the shape, size, spin and electromagnetic multipole moments of these nuclei. However, in such measurements it is difficult to combine a high efficiency with a high spectral resolution. Here we demonstrate the on-line application of atomic laser ionization spectroscopy in a supersonic gas jet, a technique suited for high-precision studies of the ground- and isomeric-state properties of nuclei located at the extremes of stability. The technique is characterized in a measurement on actinium isotopes around the N=126 neutron shell closure. A…
Advancing Radiation-Detected Resonance Ionization towards Heavier Elements and More Exotic Nuclides
2022
Atoms 10(2), 41 (2022). doi:10.3390/atoms10020041
Atom-at-a-time laser resonance ionization spectroscopy of nobelium
2016
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…
Precision Measurement of the First Ionization Potential of Nobelium
2018
One of the most important atomic properties governing an element's chemical behavior is the energy required to remove its least-bound electron, referred to as the first ionization potential. For the heaviest elements, this fundamental quantity is strongly influenced by relativistic effects which lead to unique chemical properties. Laser spectroscopy on an atom-at-a-time scale was developed and applied to probe the optical spectrum of neutral nobelium near the ionization threshold. The first ionization potential of nobelium is determined here with a very high precision from the convergence of measured Rydberg series to be 6.626 21±0.000 05 eV. This work provides a stringent benchmark for st…
Performance of a high repetition pulse rate laser system for in-gas-jet laser ionization studies with the Leuven laser ion source @ LISOL
2012
The Leuven Isotope Separator On-Line (LISOL) facility at the Cyclotron Research Center (CRC) Louvain-la-Neuve; The laser ionization efficiency of the Leuven gas cell-based laser ion source was investigated under on- and off-line conditions using two distinctly different laser setups: a low-repetition rate dye laser system and a high-repetition rate Ti:sapphire laser system. A systematic study of the ion signal dependence on repetition rate and laser pulse energy was performed in off-line tests using stable cobalt and copper isotopes. These studies also included in-gas-jet laser spectroscopy measurements on the hyperfine structure of 63Cu. A final run under on-line conditions in which the ra…
Developments towards in-gas-jet laser spectroscopy studies of actinium isotopes at LISOL
2015
To study exotic nuclides at the borders of stability with laser ionization and spectroscopy techniques, highest efficiencies in combination with a high spectral resolution are required. These usually opposing requirements are reconciled by applying the in-gas-laser ionization and spectroscopy (IGLIS) technique in the supersonic gas jet produced by a de Laval nozzle installed at the exit of the stopping gas cell. Carrying out laser ionization in the low-temperature and low density supersonic gas jet eliminates pressure broadening, which will significantly improve the spectral resolution. This article presents the required modifications at the Leuven Isotope Separator On-Line (LISOL) facility…
Enhancing genre-based measures of music preference by user-defined liking and social tags
2012
Musical preferences are typically determined by asking participants to indicate their favourite musical genres. These genre-based measures have some considerable pitfalls, since specific pieces of music in a genre might be liked more than the genre itself, and finding consensus to define a genre is often a challenging task. The aims of the present study were to (1) assess how effective genre-based measures are at identifying musical preferences, by comparing them to free responses; (2) demonstrate how the fit can be improved between the genre-based measures and sampled population; and (3) suggest and evaluate methods that use lists of liked and disliked artists to define musical preference…
In-gas laser ionization and spectroscopy of actinium isotopes near the N=126 closed shell
2017
The in-gas laser ionization and spectroscopy (IGLIS) techniquewas applied on the $^{212–215}$Ac isotopes, produced at the Leuven Isotope Separator On-Line (LISOL) facility by using the in-gas-cell and the in-gas-jet methods. The first application under on-line conditions of the in-gas-jet laser spectroscopy method showed a superior performance in terms of selectivity, spectral resolution, and efficiency in comparison with the in-gas-cell method. Following the analysis of both experiments, the magnetic-dipole moments for the $^{212–215}$Ac isotopes, electric-quadrupole moments and nuclear spins for the $^{214,215}$Ac isotopes are presented and discussed. A good agreement is obtained with lar…
Looking Beyond Genres: Identifying Meaningful Semantic Layers from Tags in Online Music Collections
2011
A scheme for identifying the semantic layers of music-related tags is presented. Arguments are provided why the applications of the tags cannot be effectively pursued without a reasonable understanding of their semantic qualities. The identification scheme consists of a set of filters. The first is related with social consensus, user-count ratio, and n-gram properties of tags. The next relies on look-up functions across multiple databases to determine the probable semantic layer of each tag. Examples of the semantic layers with prevalence rates are given based on application of the scheme to a subset of the Million Song Dataset. Finally, a validation of the results was carried out with an i…
High-resolution laser system for the S3-Low Energy Branch
2022
International audience; In this paper we present the first high-resolution laser spectroscopy results obtained at the GISELE laser laboratory of the GANIL-SPIRAL2 facility, in preparation for the first experiments with the S$^3$-Low Energy Branch. Studies of neutron-deficient radioactive isotopes of erbium and tin represent the first physics cases to be studied at S$^3$. The measured isotope-shift and hyperfine structure data are presented for stable isotopes of these elements. The erbium isotopes were studied using the $4f^{12}6s^2$$^3H_6 \rightarrow 4f^{12}(^3 H)6s6p$$J = 5$ atomic transition (415 nm) and the tin isotopes were studied by the $5s^25p^2 (^3P_0) \rightarrow 5s^25p6s (^3P_1)$…
Resolution Characterizations of JetRIS in Mainz Using 164Dy
2022
Atoms 10(2), 57 (2022). doi:10.3390/atoms10020057
Impact of buffer gas quenching on the $^1S_0$ $\to$ $^1P_1$ ground-state atomic transition in nobelium
2017
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…
Timbre and affect dimensions: Evidence from affect and similarity ratings and acoustic correlates of isolated instrument sounds
2012
considerable effort has been made towards understanding how acoustic and structural features contribute to emotional expression in music, but relatively little attention has been paid to the role of timbre in this process. Our aim was to investigate the role of timbre in the perception of affect dimensions in isolated musical sounds, by way of three behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated perceived affects of 110 instrument sounds that were equal in duration, pitch, and dynamics using a three-dimensional affect model (valence, energy arousal, and tension arousal) and preference and emotional intensity. In Experiment 2, an emotional dissimilarity task was applied to a…
Alternative approach to populate and study the $^{229}Th$ nuclear clock isomer
2019
A new approach to observe the radiative decay of the $^{229}$Th nuclear isomer, and to determine its energy and radiative lifetime, is presented. Situated at a uniquely low excitation energy, this nuclear state might be a key ingredient for the development of a nuclear clock, a nuclear laser and the search for time variations of the fundamental constants. The isomer's $\gamma$ decay towards the ground state will be studied with a high-resolution VUV spectrometer after its production by the $\beta$ decay of $^{229}$Ac. The novel production method presents a number of advantages asserting its competitive nature with respect to the commonly used $^{233}$U $\alpha$-decay recoil source. In this …
AMP: Artist-based Musical Preferences Derived from Free Verbal Responses and Social Tags
2011
Operational definitions of music preferences are at the core of psychological research exploring individual differences (personality, expertise) and their relation to a variety of musical behaviors. However, the measurement instruments for music preferences mostly rely on subjective likings for genres, a notion known to be problematic in several ways. We present a framework to derive music preferences based on free responses about liked and disliked artists. The framework utilizes social tags and online databases to aggregate comparable data to the existing genre-based measures. This framework was tested in a sample of 408 participants, who indicated their musical preferences using a genre-…
Opportunities and limitations of in-gas-cell laser spectroscopy of the heaviest elements with RADRIS
2022
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…