Status of the project TRAPSENSOR: Performance of the laser-desorption ion source

Abstract

Penning traps provide mass measurements on atomic nuclei with the highest accuracy and sensitivity. Depending on the experiment and on the physics goal, a relative mass uncertainty varying from 10−7 to below 10−11 is required. Regarding sensitivity, the use of only one ion for the measurement is crucial, either to perform mass measurements on superheavy elements (SHE), or to reach δm/m ≈ 10^-11 in order to contribute to the direct determination of the mass of the electron-antineutrino with accurate mass measurements on specific nuclei. This has motivated the development of a new technique called Quantum Sensor based on a laser-cooled ion stored in a Penning trap, to perform mass measurements using fluorescence photons instead of electronic detection. The device is currently under development at the University of Granada (Spain) within the project TRAPSENSOR. We describe the physics which motivates the construction of this device, the expected performance of the Quantum Sensor compared to that from existing techniques, and briefly present the main components of the project. As a specific aspect of the project, the performance of the laser-desorption ion source utilized to produce calcium, rhenium and osmium ions at different kinetic energies is presented.