Diversifying beam species through decay and recapture ion trapping: a demonstrative experiment at TITAN-EBIT

Recapturing the recoiling daughters from radioactive decay can be a simple way to diversify beam availability at rare isotope beam facilities. In the decay and recapture ion trapping (DRIT) technique, a parent species is stored in an ion trap and left to decay, and the daughter ions are recaptured by the trap and become available for use. We successfully demonstrated the technique using the electron beam ion trap (EBIT) at the TITAN facility. A pure cloud of 30Mg ions was stored in the EBIT for about one half-life and sent to a Penning trap mass spectrometer, which confirmed the production of 30Al daughter ions. Systematic measurements and simulations suggest high recapture efficiencies of the recoil ion and little influence of the recoiling energy in the observed losses. With the secondary beam, we also performed precision mass measurements of the parent 30Mg8 and the daughter 30Al11 ions. Our results agree with the literature and improve its precision. The success of this experiment shows that EBITs can produce high-quality beams through the DRIT technique.