High-precision mass measurements for fundamental studies with a four-trap mass spectrometer
Final Report Abstract
A novel five-trap system consisting of two monitoring traps, two preparation traps and one measurement trap has been developed and partly brought into operation and commissioned. The Penning trap system is located inside a superconducting magnet with one homogeneous field zone of 12cm length for precision mass measurements on highly charged stable and long-lived ions. The ions have been produced either from an off-line commercial EBIT (Dresden-EBIT3) or from the on-line super EBIT of the division of Prof. Ullrich at MPIK. The preparation traps allow for the preparation of the reference ion and the ion of interest prior to their transport to the precision trap, where the actual mass measurement takes place. The highly charged ion in the monitoring trap allows for the insitu calibration and monitoring of the magnetic field stability. The measurements on single ions and the permanent exchange of the ions in the precision trap, which still needs to be demonstrated, will allow minimizing ion-ion interactions as well as uncertainties due to magnetic field fluctuations. Recently, a novel phase sensitive detection technique has been developed, which has allowed a determination of the cyclotron frequency of a single highly charged 28Si13+ ion stored in a Penning trap with a precision of a few 10^-11 within a few minutes. In view of this, it is intended to perform mass-ratio measurements with unprecedented relative accuracies of few parts in 10^12, which corresponds, e.g., to a mass uncertainty of δm ≈ 1 eV for 238U. This would allow one, e.g., to measure the binding energy of highly charged uranium with none 238U92+ or one electron 238U91+ better than presently achieved by x-ray spectroscopy. A stringent test of quantum electrodynamics and of electron correlations in the little explored regime of extreme electromagnetic fields can be performed.
Publications
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A battery-based, low-noise voltage source. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 81, 064706 1-7 (2010)
A. Wagner, S. Sturm, B. Schabinger, K. Blaum, W. Quint
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Dipolar and quadrupolar detection using an FT-ICR MS test setup at the MPI-K Heidelberg. Hyperfine Interact. 199, 347-355 (2011)
M. Heck, K. Blaum, R.B. Cakirli, D. Rodríguez, L. Schweikhard, S. Stahl, M. Ubieto-Díaz
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One- and two-pulse quadrupolar excitation schemes investigated with FT-ICR detection. Appl. Phys. B, (2011)
M. Heck, K. Blaum, R.B. Cakirli, M. Kretzschmar, G. Marx, D. Rodríguez, L. Schweikhard, S. Stahl, M. Ubieto-Díaz
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PENTATRAP: A novel cryogenic multi-Penning trap experiment for highprecision mass measurements on highly charged ions. Appl. Phys. B, (2011)
J. Repp, Ch. Böhm, J.R. Crespo López-Urrutia, A. Dörr, S. Eliseev, S. George, M. Goncharov, Yu. Novikov, C. Roux, S. Sturm, S. Ulmer, K. Blaum
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Phase-sensitive cyclotron frequency measurement technique at ultra low energies. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 143003 1-4 (2011)
S. Sturm, A. Wagner, B. Schabinger, K. Blaum
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The trap design of PENTATRAP. Appl. Phys. B, (2011)
C. Roux, Ch. Böhm, A. Dörr, S. Eliseev, S. George, M. Goncharov, Yu. Novikov, J. Repp, S. Sturm, S. Ulmer, K. Blaum
