L.J. Mao

Study of dielectronic recombination at the CSRm using lithium-like Ar15+ ions

The main cooler storage ring (CSRm) of the HIRFL facility in Lanzhou, China is equipped with an electron-cooler and denotes an ideal platform for dielectronic recombination (DR) experiments. In order to fully understand our DR experimental setup and especially the electron energy detuning system, we have performed a DR calibration experiment using the Li-like argon ions at the CSRm because Ar15+ has a simple electronic structure and the DR spectrum can be calculated with an ultra-high precision and be compared with the existing experimental data. The experiment was carried out over the center-of-mass energy range 0–32 eV that includes all DR resonance associated with 2S1/2 → 2p1/2 and most of the 2S1/2 → 2p3/2 excitations. We present the details of the experimental technique and the DR experimental resonance spectrum of the Ar15+.

The first test experiment performed at the electron cooler of storage rings in Lanzhou

The cooler storage ring (CSR) project was launched in 2000 at the Institute of Modern Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou. In 2007, the installation was completed and the commissioning of CSRs gained great success, a new highly precise generation of collision experiments will become accessible even for the heaviest ion species. A commissioning RR experiment was performed at the electron cooler with Ar18+ ions, the results are reported. And the further development of the experiments at cooler will be discussed.

Commissioning of HIRFL‐CSR and its Electron Coolers

The brief achievements of HIRFL‐CSR commissioning and the achieved parameters of its coolers were presented. With the help of electron cooling code, the cooling time of ion beam were extensive simulated in various parameters of the ion beam in the HIRFL‐CSR electron cooling storage rings respectively, such as ion beam energy, initial transverse emittance, and momentum spread. The influence of the machine lattice parameters‐betatron function, and dispersion function on the cooling time was investigated. The parameters of electron beam and cooling devices were taken into account, such as effective cooling length, magnetic field strength and its parallelism in cooling section, electron beam size and density. As a result, the lattice parameters of HIRFL‐CSR were optimal for electron cooling, and the parameters of electron beam can be optimized according to the parameters of heavy ion beam.

Proposal for precision determination of 7.8 eV isomeric state in 229Th at heavy ion storage ring

The ultraviolet optical transition of the isomeric state in 229Th has attracted much attention recently due to its potential application to building an atomic/nuclear clock with ultra-high precision. However, the lowest nuclear excitation energy and the lifetime of the first excited state of 229Th were not measured directly and precisely until now, and how to precisely determine this isomer state of the 229Th is an urgent requirement. Here an experimental approach of using a technique similar to that of dielectronic recombination to measure the transition energy of the isomer state of 229Th at heavy ion storage rings is described. It is expected that the resonant transition can be found and determined with a precision better than several milli-eV.

Electron cooling experiments in CSR

The six species heavy ion beam was accumulated with the help of electron cooling in the main ring of Cooler Storage Ring of Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou(HIRFL-CSR), the ion beam accumulation dependence on the parameters of cooler was investigated experimentally. The 400MeV/u C and 200MeV/u Xe was stored and cooled in the experimental ring CSRe, the cooling force was measured in different condition.

First application of combined isochronous and Schottky mass spectrometry: Half-lives of fully-ionized49Cr24+ and 53Fe26+ atoms

Lifetime measurements of β-decaying highly charged ions have been performed in the experimental storage ring (CSRe) by applying the isochronous Schottky mass spectrometry. The fully ionized Cr49 and Fe53 ions were produced in projectile fragmentation of Ni58 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 Cr24+49 and Fe26+53 ions. The extracted half-lives T1/2(Cr24+49)=44.0(27) min and T1/2(Fe26+53)=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.

A method to measure the transition energy γ t of the isochronously tuned storage ring

Abstract The Isochronous Mass Spectrometry (IMS) is a powerful technique developed in heavy-ion storage rings for measuring masses of very short-lived exotic nuclei. The IMS is based on the isochronous setting of the ring. One of the main parameters of this setting is the transition energy γ t . It has been a challenge to determine the γ t and especially to monitor the variation of γ t during experiments. In this paper we introduce a method to measure the γ t online during IMS experiments by using the acquired experimental data. Furthermore, since the storage ring has (in our context) a relatively large momentum acceptance, the variation of the γ t across the ring acceptance is a source of systematic uncertainty of measured masses. With the installation of two time-of-flight (TOF) detectors, the velocity of each stored ion and its revolution time are simultaneously available for the analysis. These quantities enabled us to determine the γ t as a function of orbital length in the ring. The presented method is especially important for future IMS experiments planned at the new-generation storage ring facilities FAIR in Germany and HIAF in China.

Injection method of barrier bucket supported by off-aligned electron cooling for CRing of HIAF

A new accelerator complex, HIAF (the High Intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility), has been approved in China. It is designed to provide intense primary and radioactive ion beams for research in high energy density physics, nuclear physics, atomic physics as well as other applications. In order to achieve a high intensity of up to 5e11 ppp 238U34+, the Compression Ring (CRing) needs to stack more than 5 bunches transferred from the Booster Ring (BRing). However, the normal bucket to bucket injection scheme can only achieve an intensity gain of 2, so an injection method, fixed barrier bucket (BB) supported by electron cooling, is proposed. To suppress the severe space charge effect during the stacking process, off-alignment is adopted in the cooler to control the transverse emittance. In this paper, simulation and optimization with the BETACOOL program are presented.

Low energy range dielectronic recombination of Fluorine-like Fe17+ at the CSRm*

The accuracy of dielectronic recombination (DR) data for astrophysics related ions plays a key role in astrophysical plasma modeling. The absolute DR rate coefficient of Fe17+ ions was measured at the main cooler storage ring at the Institute of Modern Physics, Lanzhou, China. The experimental electron-ion collision energy range covers the first Rydberg series up to n = 24 for the DR resonances associated with the core excitations. A theoretical calculation was performed by using FAC code and compared with the measured DR rate coefficient. Overall reasonable agreement was found between the experimental results and calculations. Moreover, the plasma rate coefficient was deduced from the experimental DR rate coefficient and compared with the available results from the literature. At the low energy range, significant discrepancies were found, and the measured resonances challenge state-of-the-art theory at low collision energies.

RF-bunching of relativistic 12C3+ ion beam for laser cooling experiment at the CSRe

To prepare the upcoming experiment of laser cooling of relativistic 12C3+ ion beams at the experimental cooler storage ring (CSRe), a test experiment was performed with 12C3+ ion beams at an energy of 122 MeV/u on the CSRe, at the Institute of Modern Physics, Lanzhou, China. In this experiment, the main storage ring of CSRm was employed to accumulate and accelerate the ion beam which was injected into the CSRe for the experiments. The number of 12C3+ ions at the CSRe reached 5×108 for every injection, which satisfied the experimental requirement. To fulfil the laser cooling experiment, the 12C3+ ion beams were bunched by sinusoidal waveforms with fixed and sweeping frequencies, respectively. A resonant Schottky pick-up was employed to record the Schottky spectra of these ion beams. The test experimental results demonstrated that the RF-buncher and diagnostic systems at the CSRe worked well and the CSRe was very stable with 12C3+ ion beams, hereby the CSRe is suitable for laser cooling experiment.