Abstract
The FRS Ion Catcher at GSI enables precision experiments with thermalized projectile and fission fragments. At the same time it serves as a test facility for the Low-Energy Branch of the Super-FRS at FAIR. The FRS Ion Catcher has been commissioned and its performance has been characterized in five experiments with 238U and 124Xe projectile and fission fragments produced at energies in the range from 300 to 1000 MeV/u. High and almost element-independent efficiencies for the thermalization of short-lived nuclides produced at relativistic energies have been obtained. High-accuracy mass measurements of more than 30 projectile and fission fragments have been performed with a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS) at mass resolving powers of up to 410,000, with production cross sections down to the microbarn-level, and at rates down to a few ions per hour. The versatility of the MR-TOF-MS for isomer research has been demonstrated by the measurement of various isomers, determination of excitation energies and the production of a pure isomeric beam. Recently, several instrumental upgrades have been implemented at the FRS Ion Catcher. New experiments will be carried out during FAIR Phase-0 at GSI, including direct mass measurements of neutron-deficient nuclides below 100Sn and neutron-rich nuclides below 208Pb, measurement of β-delayed neutron emission probabilities and reaction studies with multi-nucleon transfer.
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10 September 2019
Due to technical constraints this article was published in volume 240:1 with erroneous article citation ID number 3 whereas this should have been 73 which is corrected as such. Springer Nature sincerely apologizes towards the author(s) for the inconvenience caused.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under contracts no. 05P15RGFN1 and 05P19RGFN1, by Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and GSI under the JLU-GSI strategic Helmholtzpartnership agreement, by HGS-HIRe, by the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art (HMWK) through the LOEWE Center HICforFAIR, and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme contract no. 654002 via the JRA SATNURSE. DLB, PC and AS are supported by Extreme Light Infrastructure Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) Phase II, a project co-financed by the Romanian Government and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund - the Competitiveness Operational Programme (1/07.07.2016, COP, ID 1334).
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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Trapped Charged Particles and Fundamental Physics (TCP 2018), Traverse City, Michigan, USA, 30 September-5 October 2018
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Plaß, W.R., Dickel, T., Mardor, I. et al. The science case of the FRS Ion Catcher for FAIR Phase-0. Hyperfine Interact 240, 73 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-019-1597-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10751-019-1597-4