Highly charged ions in Penning traps, a new tool for resolving low lying isomeric states

Abstract

The use of highly charged ions increases the precision and resolving power, in particular for short-lived species produced at on-line radio-isotope beam facilities, achievable with Penning trap mass spectrometers. This increase in resolving power provides a new and unique access to resolving low-lying long-lived ($T_{1/2}>50$ ms) nuclear isomers. Recently, the $111.19(22)$ keV (determined from $\gamma$-ray spectroscopy) isomeric state in ${}^{78}$Rb has been resolved from the ground state, in a charge state of $q=8+$ with the TITAN Penning trap at the TRIUMF-ISAC facility. The excitation energy of the isomer was measured to be $108.7(6.4)$ keV above the ground state. The extracted masses for both the ground and isomeric states, and their difference, agree with the AME2003 and Nuclear Data Sheet values. This proof of principle measurement demonstrates the feasibility of using Penning trap mass spectrometers coupled to charge breeders to study nuclear isomers and opens a new route for isomer searches.

8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Nuclear magic numbers: new features far from stability
• First Penning-trap mass measurement in the millisecond half-life range: the exotic halo nucleus 11Li
• The Effects of Thermonuclear Reaction-Rate Variations on 26Al Production in Massive Stars: a Sensitivity Study
• First direct mass-measurement of the two-neutron halo nucleus 6He and improved mass for the four-neutron halo 8He
• First Use of High Charge States for Mass Measurements of Short-lived Nuclides in a Penning Trap
• Verifying the accuracy of the TITAN Penning-trap mass spectrometer
• A large Bradbury Nielsen ion gate with flexible wire spacing based on photo-etched stainless steel grids and its characterization applying symmetric and asymmetric potentials

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• Extending the low-$Z$ "border'' of the $A=100$ region of deformation with precision mass spectrometry of ${}^{96-98}$Kr
• A Novel Transparent Charged Particle Detector for the CPET Upgrade at TITAN