Production of highly charged ions of rare species by laser-induced desorption inside an electron beam ion trap

TL;DR

This paper introduces a highly efficient laser-induced desorption technique for injecting rare species into electron beam ion traps, enabling production of highly charged ions for advanced nuclear and spectroscopic research.

Contribution

It presents a novel method for efficiently producing highly charged ions of rare isotopes inside an EBIT, expanding capabilities for precision measurements.

Findings

Achieved production of highly charged ions from very small samples.

Demonstrated stable charge states up to 45+ for $^{165}$Ho.

Enabled extraction and storage of ions for spectroscopic applications.

Abstract

This paper reports on the development and testing of a novel, highly efficient technique for the injection of very rare species into electron beam ion traps (EBITs) for the production of highly charged ions (HCI). It relies on in-trap laser-induced desorption of atoms from a sample brought very close to the electron beam resulting in a very high capture efficiency in the EBIT. We have demonstrated a steady production of HCI of the stable isotope $^{165}\mathrm{Ho}$ from samples of only $10^{12}$ atoms ($\sim$ 300 pg) in charge states up to 45+. HCI of these species can be subsequently extracted for use in other experiments or stored in the trapping volume of the EBIT for spectroscopic measurements. The high efficiency of this technique expands the range of rare isotope HCIs available for high-precision nuclear mass and spectroscopic measurements. A first application of this technique is the production of HCI of the synthetic radioisotope $^{163}\mathrm{Ho}$ for a high-precision measurement of the $Q_{\mathrm{EC}}$-value of the electron capture in $^{163}\mathrm{Ho}$ within the Electron Capture in Holmium experiment (ECHo collaboration) ultimately leading to a measurement of the electron neutrino mass with an uncertainty on the sub-eV level.