Hannover 2010 – scientific programme

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SYDP: Dissertation Prize Symposium

SYDP 1: AMOP Dissertation Prize Symposium

SYDP 1.4: Invited Talk

Monday, March 8, 2010, 18:00–18:30, F 107

High-precision mass measurements with Penning traps — •Sebastian George — National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA — Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics (JINA)

Nuclear masses of both radioactive and stable nuclei are important key parameters in many fields of physics. The required uncertainties are ranging from 10⁻⁷ to below 10⁻¹¹. Due to a continuous development over decades Penning traps turned out to be ideal tools for the determination of nuclear masses. A major improvement in the recent past has been the adoption of Ramseys excitation method of separated oscillatory fields to the Penning trap. In a first application the masses of the radioactive isotopes ²⁶Al and ³⁸Ca have been measured at the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP in order to contribute to tests of the electroweak part of the Standard Model.

For applications in metrology or for the determination of fundamental constants nuclear masses have to be determined with a relative precision lower than 10-11. To this end, a novel Penning trap project called PENTATRAP has been developed. It consists of a combination of several Penning traps, each of them with single-ion detection sensitivity. PENTATRAP will be dedicated to highly-charged isotopes delivered by the EBIT at the Max-Planck-Institut of Heidelberg. Future perspectives will be discussed.