Between atomic and nuclear physics: radioactive decays of highly-charged ions

Atanasov D., Blaum K., Bosch F., Brandau C., Buehler P., Chen X., ...More

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS, vol.48, no.14, 2015 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 48 Issue: 14
  • Publication Date: 2015
  • Doi Number: 10.1088/0953-4075/48/14/144024
  • Journal Name: JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Keywords: highly charged ions, radioactive decays, storage rings, STORED EXOTIC NUCLEI, ORBITAL ELECTRON-CAPTURE, ISOCHRONOUS MASS-SPECTROMETRY, HALF-LIFE MEASUREMENTS, EXPERIMENTAL STORAGE-RING, IONIZED HEAVY-ATOMS, LARGE-SCALE MASS, FRS-ESR, BETA-DECAY, PRECISION EXPERIMENTS
  • Istanbul University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Highly charged radioactive ions can be stored for extended periods of time in storage rings which allows for precision measurements of their decay modes. The straightforward motivation for performing such studies is that fully ionised nuclei or few-electron ions can be viewed as clean quantum-mechanical systems, in which the interactions of the many electrons can be either excluded or treated precisely. Thus, the influence of the electron shell on the decay probability can be investigated. Another important motivation is stellar nucleosynthesis, which proceeds at high temperatures and the involved atoms are therefore highly ionised. Presented here is a compact review of the relevant experiments conducted at heavy-ion storage rings. Furthermore, we outline the perspectives for future experiments at new-generation storage-ring facilities.