FTICR analysis of the magnetic trapping mode of the electron beam ion trap

Considerations for design of a Fourier transform mass spectrometer in the 4.2 K cold bore of a superconducting magnet

An external source Fourier transform mass spectrometer (FTMS) constructed inside the vertical cold bore of a superconducting magnet will have dramatic advantages in effective magnetic field, noise figures, and base pressure over current commercially available external source FTMS systems. There are substantial, but solvable, difficulties in the design, primarily with regard to control of the helium boiloff rate to an acceptable level, as well as relatively minor design challenges with heat sinks, contraction of metallic ion optic elements in the extreme temperature, and tandem mass spectrometry experiments. However, the ability to construct the FTMS inside the narrow bore tube of existing, commercially available vertical bore NMR magnets will allow access to the upper magnetic field limit currently used by 900 MHz (21 Tesla) - 1 GHz (23.3 Tesla) NMR experiments. The vacuum system, simply by being held inside the cold bore at 4.2 K, will cryopump itself dropping base pressures substantially, and heat sinking the input resistor of the preamplifier to this cryogenically cooled vacuum chamber will allow reduction of the input Johnson noise by a factor of 8.4 with associated 8.4-fold improvement in signal/noise, sensitivity, and dynamic range. The simultaneous improvement of three fundamental limiting factors in the FTMS (field strength, base pressure, and Johnson noise figure) will clearly outweigh the concomitant increased helium boiloff rate particularly if this rate can be dropped to the estimated <5 L/day range. The additional use of modern cryorefrigerators will further reduce helium boiloff to zero except during MS(n) experiments and system cooldown.

X-Ray emission following low-energy charge exchange collisions of highly charged ions

K-shell x-ray emission following low-energy charge exchange collisions ( </=11 eV/amu) has been measured for ten bare and hydrogenic ions up to U91+. The data resolve capture into angular momentum states with l = 1 and provide a stringent test of theory. The assumption of Stark mixing of angular momentum states is inappropriate at such energies. Results from detailed calculations give a better description of the data, but significant discrepancies are noted. The measurements show that the hardness ratio of charge-exchange induced K-shell x-ray emission represents a diagnostic of the dynamics of ion-atom interactions in situations where the energy is below 1 keV/amu, e.g., in solar wind collisions.