Eur. Phys. J. D 45, 47-53 (2007)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2007-00001-5

Carbon-cluster mass calibration at SHIPTRAP

¹ Institut für Physik, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität, 17487 Greifswald, Germany
² GSI, Planckstr. 1, 64291 Darmstadt, Germany
³ St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, 188300 Gatchina, Russia
⁴ Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 55099 Mainz, Germany

Corresponding author: ^a chaudhuri@physik.uni-greifswald.de

Received: 13 November 2006
Published online: 12 January 2007

Abstract

A carbon-cluster ion source has been installed and tested at SHIPTRAP, the Penning-trap mass spectrometer for precision mass measurements of heavy elements at GSI. Carbon-cluster ions ¹²C_n⁺, 5 ≤n ≤23, were produced by laser-induced desorption and ionization from a carbon sample. They were tested for the first time as reference ions in an on-line mass measurement of the radionuclides ¹⁴⁴Dy, ¹⁴⁶Dy and ¹⁴⁷Ho. In addition, carbon clusters of various sizes were used for an investigation of the systematic uncertainty of SHIPTRAP covering a mass range from 84 u to 240 u. The mass-dependent uncertainty was found to be negligible for the case of (m-m _ref)< 100 u. However, a systematic uncertainty of 4.5 ×10^-8 was revealed.