Principles behind a He-jet system and its application for isotope separation

Development of a gas jet coupled electron cyclotron resonance ion source for radioactive ion beam

A 2.45 GHz electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source coupled to a gas-jet skimmer system has been developed for the online production of radioactive ion beams (RIBs). Using radial injection of gas jet in the ion source, RIBs of 11C1+, 11CO21+, and 11CO1+ have been produced online with beam intensity up to about 9 × 103 particles per second for a 1 µA primary proton beam bombarding a nitrogen gas target. The details of the gas jet coupled ECR ion source and the results for stable isotope beams and RIBs are reported.

A gas-jet transport and catcher technique for on-line production of radioactive ion beams using an electron cyclotron resonance ion-source

Radioactive ion beams (RIB) have been produced on-line, using a gas-jet recoil transport coupled Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion-source at the VECC-RIB facility. Radioactive atoms∕molecules carried through the gas-jet were stopped in a catcher placed inside the ECR plasma chamber. A skimmer has been used to remove bulk of the carrier gas at the ECR entrance. The diffusion of atoms∕molecules through the catcher has been verified off-line using stable isotopes and on-line through transmission of radioactive reaction products. Beams of (14)O (71 s), (42)K (12.4 h), (43)K (22.2 h), and (41)Ar (1.8 h) have been produced by bombarding nitrogen and argon gas targets with proton and alpha particle beams from the K130 cyclotron at VECC. Typical measured intensity of RIB at the separator focal plane is found to be a few times 10(3) particles per second (pps). About 3.2 × 10(3) pps of 1.4 MeV (14)O RIB has been measured after acceleration through a radiofrequency quadrupole linac. The details of the gas-jet coupled ECR ion-source and RIB production experiments are presented along with the plans for the future.

Superheavy element studies with preseparated isotopes

In recent years, significant progress in the field of superheavy element research has been achieved thanks to a novel combination of techniques from different fields. This “physical preseparation” approach includes the coupling of an ancillary setup – typically a chemistry apparatus or a counting setup – to a physical recoil separator. This latter preseparator removes unwanted nuclear reaction products as well as the intense heavy-ion beam associated with superheavy element experiments and thus isolates the evaporation residues of the nuclear fusion reactions. These are guided to the separators's focal plane, where they are extracted and available for further transport to external setups, e.g., by a gas-jet. In this overview, the development of physical preseparation is described, and experimental results from nuclear chemistry and physics that were achieved with “preseparated” isotopes are summarized, with an emphasis on results relevant for superheavy element research. The covered topics range from chemical studies in the liquid as well as in the gas phase, the measurement of nuclear decay properties and of atomic masses. Preseparation was already shown to be a very powerful approach in these studies and promises to allow further progress in superheavy element research.