Catching recoiling ions from cold collisions and nuclear beta-decay

by Ben Ohayon

Eth Zürich

at Particles and Fields Seminar

Mon, 01 Jun 2020, 14:00
Zoom only

Abstract

Zoom only: https://zoom.us/j/95759068407

The last decade witnessed a plethora of applications of experimental methods from AMO physics to low-energy nuclear physics. These include precision laser spectroscopy of short lived or exotic atoms, penning-trap mass spectrometry, and atom-trap trace analysis. A new and promising direction is the application of charged particle imaging methods for medium energy (keV) particles recoiling from nuclear decay.

In this talk I present a new experimental scheme that combines the well-established method of velocity-map-imaging with a metastable neon MOT target. We use this MOT-VMI for obtaining the branching ratios and recoil-ion energy distributions for the penning ionization process in optical collisions of cold metastable neon, from which we extract the potential depth of the highly excited dimers, and compare with theoretical calculations [1].

In the second part of the talk I will show the design and simulation of a High-Energy MOT-VMI acting as a 'decay microscope' for short-lived neon isotopes, enabling the measurement of branching fractions to various excited states, and angular correlations between the decay products. In light of on-going and planned experiments in this field, the main opportunities to make a significant impact using trapped neon isotopes, is in searching for, or excluding, new tensor physics which is coupled to right-handed neutrinos, as well as extracting the Vud CKM matrix element for mirror and superallowed Fermi transitions [2].

[1] BO, H Rahangdale, J Chocron, Y Mishnayot, R Kosloff, O Heber, G Ron. Physical Review Letters 123 (6), 063401
[2] BO, H Rahangdale, E Parnes, G Perelman, O Heber, G Ron. Physical Review C 101 (3), 035501

Zoom only:
https://zoom.us/j/95759068407

Created on 26-05-2020 by Citron, Zvi (zhcitron)
Updaded on 26-05-2020 by Citron, Zvi (zhcitron)