In-ring velocity measurement for isochronous mass spectrometry

Abstract

Isochronous mass spectrometry based on heavy-ion storage rings is a powerful tool for direct mass measurements of very short-lived nuclei. Owing to the nature of in-flight separation of high-energy reaction products, many ion species with different mass-to-charge ratios (m/q) can be transmitted to and stored in the ring in one shot. However, high mass resolving power can be achieved only for a limited range of ion species with velocities well matching the isochronous condition of the ring. The knowledge of velocities of each stored ions is required to overcome this restriction. For this purpose, two time-of-flight (TOF) detectors were installed 18 m apart in one straight section of the cooler-storage ring CSRe in Lanzhou. The time sequences measured by the two TOF detectors for each stored ion were used for the precision determination of its velocity. A relative precision of the velocity is achieved to the level of 10^{-5} for individual ions. The betatron oscillations of the ion motion in the ring were clearly identified in the data and were taken into account in the analysis. The presented technique can be used for measurements of machine tunes and their dependence on particle momenta.