Determination of the lifetime of D 2 − and HD− ions

Abstract

A method for determining the lifetime of unstable ions is described. The method is based on measuring the decrease in the ion beam current onto a fixed detector with increasing path length of the ion beam from the ion source to the detector. The measurements performed for D− 2 and HD− molecular ions have shown that their lifetimes are 3.5 ± 0.1 and 4.4 ± 0.1 μs, respectively.