[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Colloquium today at 14:00

[TRIUMF Seminars]

Date/Time: Tue 2016-03-15 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium          

Speaker:   Brad Schultz (Notre Dame)

Title:     Precision measurements in uncharted territories

Abstract: Precision mass measurements provide insight into a number of important areas, including nuclear structure, tests of fundamental interactions and the Standard Model, and r-process nucleosynthesis. Penning trap mass spectrometry (PTMS) is currently the premiere technique for accurate and precise mass determination. The precision of PTMS is limited by the presence of unwanted contaminants, the incoming rates, and the radioactive lifetime of the nuclides. To increase the precision, TITAN has demonstrated that isotopes can be charge bred to higher charge states using an electron beam ion trap. However, the charge breeding process increases the energy spread of the ions, which is detrimental to the efficiency and precision of PTMS. The recently commissioned cooler Penning trap (CPET) has been designed to sympathetically cool highly charged ions using electrons or protons, reducing the emittance for injection into the Penning trap. PTMS also requires pure samples of a single nuclide, which requires an efficient, high-resolution purification method compatible with both the low yield and short half-life of the desired species. A multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS) meets these criteria, in addition to boasting a simple design and small physical footprint. With resolving powers greater than 105, these devices are capable of isobaric purification in times on the order of 10 ms. As an added bonus, the MR-TOF-MS can also be used for direct mass measurements, with uncertainties comparable to that of PTMS. In this talk I will discuss the design and implementation of CPET at TITAN, and current efforts to commission a newly-built MR-TOF-MS at the University of Notre Dame, for use as an isobaric purifier at Argonne National Lab. The potential for using an MR-TOF-MS for r-process mass measurements at TITAN will be discussed.

The seminar will be streamed and recorded, please contact Niki Martin for details.




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General TRIUMF seminar information available at http://www.triumf.ca/home/upcoming-events/about-seminars-lectures