Chemically selective laser ion-source for the CERN-ISOLDE on-line mass separator facility

Abstract

Radioactive atoms produced in proton-induced nuclear reactions and released from thick targets have been ionized resonantly by laser radiation in a hot tube connected to the target container. Pulsed tuneable lasers with a repetition rate as high as 10 kHz have been applied for stepwise resonant excitation and photoionization in the last step. In this way the efficiency and selectivity of the target and ion source system which serves as an injector to the on-line isotope separators at CERN-ISOLDE could be improved. In a series of off-line and on-line studies the ionization of Sn ( E i = 7.3 eV), Tm ( E i = 6.2 eV), Yb ( E i = 6.2 eV) and Li ( E i = 5.4 eV) was investigated. An ionization efficiency of up to 15% was obtained for Yb. The ratio of the laser-ionized and surface-ionized ion currents was measured as a function of temperature for different ionization cavity materials (W, Ta, Nb and TaC). It was shown that this ratio, i.e. the selectivity, rises for Tm from 10 to 10000 with falling temperature and is strongly dependent on the material. Since the lasers are pulsed the ion beam becomes bunched with a pulse width of about 10–50 μs. This width is strongly dependent on the potential drop along the tube (caused by the electric current used for heating the tube) and on the alignment of the laser beams with respect to the tube axis. The selectivity could be further improved by a factor of 10 using gated detection of the bunched ion beam.