Abstract
An ultra-sensitive laser spectroscopic method for the investigation of transuranium nuclides has been developed based on resonance ionization in an argon buffer gas cell. This method has been combined with ion-guide extraction and mass selective direct detection of the resonantly ionized atoms. Using argon as a buffer gas, recoils of fusion reactions can be thermalized even at low pressure. The differential pumping system consists of only one roots pump and two turbo molecular pumps. The set-up has been tested with 243Am evaporated from a filament located inside the optical gas cell. Resonance ionization is performed using a two-step excitation with an excimer-dye-laser combination. The ions are transported by a suitable electrical field to the nozzle, and are ejected with the ion-guide gas jet into an electrostatic lens system followed by a quadrupole mass spectrometer and a channeltron detector. The total sensitivity has been measured to be 1.0 × 10 −4. The extraction time for ions based on electric field guidance amounts to 1.5 ms, which is two orders of magnitude faster than the ion-guide gas exchange time of this set-up.
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