First application of combined isochronous and Schottky mass spectrometry: Half-lives of fully ionized 49Cr24+ and 53Fe26+ atoms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel method combining isochronous and Schottky mass spectrometry to measure the half-lives of fully ionized exotic nuclei, confirming the technique's accuracy and potential for future nuclear physics research.

Contribution

It introduces a new combined spectrometry approach for simultaneous mass and lifetime measurements of exotic ions in storage rings.

Findings

Measured half-lives of 49Cr24+ and 53Fe26+ agree with literature values

Validated the use of a resonant Schottky detector for lifetime monitoring

Proved the feasibility of combined mass and lifetime measurements in storage rings

Abstract

Lifetime measurements of b -decaying highly charged ions have been performed in the storage ring CSRe by applying the isochronous Schottky mass spectrometry. The fully ionized 49Cr and 53Fe ions were produced in projectile fragmentation of 58Ni primary beam and were stored in the CSRe tuned into the isochronous ion-optical mode. The new resonant Schottky detector was applied to monitor the intensities of stored uncooled 49Cr24+ and 53Fe26+ ions. The extracted half-lives T1/2(49Cr24+) = 44.0(27) min and T1/2(53Fe26+) = 8.47(19) min are in excellent agreement with the literature half-life values corrected for the disabled electron capture branchings. This is an important proof-of-principle step towards realizing the simultaneous mass and lifetime measurements on exotic nuclei at the future storage ring facilities.