A liquid nitrogen cooled electrostatic ion storage ring for atomic/molecular collision research

Abstract

A new electrostatic ion storage ring (TMU E-ring) has been constructed by collaboration of atomic physics and cluster chemistry groups in Tokyo Metropolitan University. The compact-sized ring has a race-track-type shape of about 7.7 m in circumference, and is able to store the ions of the energy up to 20q keV. Large molecular/cluster ions are stored taking an advantage that the electrostatic ion storage ring is free from the limit of mass of circulating ions. The region of the ion trajectory is cooled down to the liquid nitrogen temperature to quench vibrationally excited ionic states of large molecules through infrared radiation.We have started the lifetime measurement of meta-stable molecular ions as well as the laser spectroscopy of huge molecular ions adopting a visible tunable laser.