arXiv · nucl-ex/0701027
Separated Oscillatory Fields for High-Precision Penning Trap Mass Spectrometry
Abstract
Ramsey's method of separated oscillatory fields is applied to the excitation of the cyclotron motion of short-lived ions in a Penning trap to improve the precision of their measured mass. The theoretical description of the extracted ion-cyclotron-resonance line shape is derived out and its correctness demonstrated experimentally by measuring the mass of the short-lived $^{38}$Ca nuclide with an uncertainty of $1.6\cdot 10^{-8}$ using the ISOLTRAP Penning trap mass spectrometer at CERN. The mass value of the superallowed beta-emitter $^{38}$Ca is an important contribution for testing the conserved-vector-current hypothesis of the electroweak interaction. It is shown that the Ramsey method applied to mass measurements yields a statistical uncertainty similar to that obtained by the conventional technique ten times faster.
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S. George, S. Baruah, B. Blank, K. Blaum, M. Breitenfeldt, U. Hager, F. Herfurth, A. Herlert, A. Kellerbauer, H. J. Kluge, M. Kretzschmar, D. Lunney, R. Savreux, S. Schwarz, L. Schweikhard, C. Yazidjian. 2007-01-19. Separated Oscillatory Fields for High-Precision Penning Trap Mass Spectrometry. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.98.162501
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