Abstract (eng)
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is an ultra-sensitive technique for measuring the abundance of trace isotopes. The main challenge is the efficient suppression of isobars of the isotope of interest, i.e. nuclides of different elements with almost the same mass, that cannot be separated by the mass spectrometers.
A new approach for element-selective filtering is to use laser photodetachment for neutralization of the unwanted isobar species on the low energy side of the AMS machine and thus broaden the spectrum of accessible isotopes. In order to reach interaction times long enough for an efficient depletion, the ions are slowed down in a buffer gas filled RFQ ion guide. Inside the so-called cooler, the ion beam is overlapped with a high power, continuous wave laser beam. If the laser wavelength is chosen properly, the unwanted element is neutralized, while the ions of interest can be re-accelerated and injected into the AMS machine.
Such a cooler system for negative ions is being developed at the ILIAS laboratory, the Ion-Laser InterAction Setup. This Master's thesis describes the modifications made to the cooler system based on SIMION simulations, the commissioning of the ion beam cooler as well as first tests concerning the suppression of an ion beam by laser photodetachment.
By the end of the Master's project atomic and molecular negative ions had been cooled successfully. In photodetachment experiments with a copper beam a suppression of almost 5 orders of magnitude and an overall transmission of the cooler system of up to 44% could be demonstrated. Once installed as an extension to VERA (Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator), laser photodetachment in the ion beam cooler is going to be used as an isobar filter in AMS measurements.