Specific velocities of particles circulating in a storage ring can lead to betatron resonances at which static perturbations of the particles orbit yield large transverse (betatron) oscillations. We have observed betatron resonances in an ultracold-atom storage ring by direct observation of betatron motion. These resonances caused a near-elimination of the longitudinal dispersion of atomic beams propagating at resonant velocities, an effect which can improve the performance of atom interferometric devices. Both the resonant velocities and the strength of the resonances were varied by deliberate modifications to the storage ring.
An electrostatic cryogenic storage ring, CSR, for beams of anions and cations with up to 300 keV kinetic energy per unit charge has been designed, constructed and put into operation. With a circumference of 35 m, the ion-beam vacuum chambers and all beam optics are in a cryostat and cooled by a closed-cycle liquid helium system. At temperatures as low as (5.5 $pm$ 1) K inside the ring, storage time constants of several minutes up to almost an hour were observed for atomic and molecular, anion and cation beams at an energy of 60 keV. The ion-beam intensity, energy-dependent closed-orbit shifts (dispersion) and the focusing properties of the machine were studied by a system of capacitive pickups. The Schottky-noise spectrum of the stored ions revealed a broadening of the momentum distribution on a time scale of 1000 s. Photodetachment of stored anions was used in the beam lifetime measurements. The detachment rate by anion collisions with residual-gas molecules was found to be extremely low. A residual-gas density below 140 cm$^{-3}$ is derived, equivalent to a room-temperature pressure below 10$^{-14}$ mbar. Fast atomic, molecular and cluster ion beams stored for long periods of time in a cryogenic environment will allow experiments on collision- and radiation-induced fragmentation processes of ions in known internal quantum states with merged and crossed photon and particle beams.
This work demonstrates that two systematic errors, coherent betatron oscillations (CBO) and muon losses can be reduced through application of radio frequency (RF) electric fields, which ultimately increases the sensitivity of the muon $g-2$ experiments. As the ensemble of polarized muons goes around a weak focusing storage ring, their spin precesses, and when they decay through the weak interaction, $mu^+ rightarrow e^+ u_e bar{ u_mu}$, the decay positrons are detected by electromagnetic calorimeters. In addition to the expected exponential decay in the positron time spectrum, the weak decay asymmetry causes a modulation in the number of positrons in a selected energy range at the difference frequency between the spin and cyclotron frequencies, $omega_text{a}$. This frequency is directly proportional to the magnetic anomaly $a_mu =(g-2)/2$, where $g$ is the g-factor of the muon, which is slightly greater than 2. The detector acceptance depends on the radial position of the muon decay, so the CBO of the muon bunch following injection into the storage ring modulate the measured muon signal with the frequency $omega_text{CBO}$. In addition, the muon populations at the edge of the beam hit the walls of the vacuum chamber before decaying, which also affects the signal. Thus, reduction of CBO and unwanted muon loss increases the $a_mu$ measurement sensitivity. Numerical and experimental studies with RF electric fields yield more than a magnitude reduction of the CBO, with muon losses comparable to the conventional method.
We have measured dissociative recombination of HCl+ with electrons using a merged beams configuration at the heavy-ion storage ring TSR located at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. We present the measured absolute merged beams recombination rate coefficient for collision energies from 0 to 4.5 eV. We have also developed a new method for deriving the cross section from the measurements. Our approach does not suffer from approximations made by previously used methods. The cross section was transformed to a plasma rate coefficient for the electron temperature range from T=10 to 5000 K. We show that the previously used HCl+ DR data underestimate the plasma rate coefficient by a factor of 1.5 at T=10 K and overestimate it by a factor of 3.0 at T=300 K. We also find that the new data may partly explain existing discrepancies between observed abundances of chlorine-bearing molecules and their astrochemical models.
We have investigated dissociative recombination (DR) of NH$^+$ with electrons using a merged beams configuration at the TSR heavy-ion storage ring located at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. We present our measured absolute merged beams recombination rate coefficient for collision energies from 0 to 12 eV. From these data we have extracted a cross section which we have transformed to a plasma rate coefficient for the collisional plasma temperature range from $T_{rm pl} = 10$ to $18000$ K. We show that the NH$^+$ DR rate coefficient data in current astrochemical models are underestimated by up to a factor of $sim 9$. Our new data will result in predicted NH$^+$ abundances lower than calculated by present models. This is in agreement with the sensitivity limits of all observations attempting to detect NH$^+$ in interstellar clouds.
We describe the construction and operation of an x-ray beam size monitor (xBSM), a device measuring $e^+$ and $e^-$ beam sizes in the CESR-TA storage ring using synchrotron radiation. The device can measure vertical beam sizes of $10-100~mu$m on a turn-by-turn, bunch-by-bunch basis at $e^pm$ beam energies of $sim2~$GeV. At such beam energies the xBSM images x-rays of $epsilonapprox$1-10$~$keV ($lambdaapprox 0.1-1$ nm) that emerge from a hard-bend magnet through a single- or multiple-slit (coded aperture) optical element onto an array of 32 InGaAs photodiodes with 50$~mu$m pitch. Beamlines and detectors are entirely in-vacuum, enabling single-shot beam size measurement down to below 0.1$~$mA ($2.5times10^9$ particles) per bunch and inter-bunch spacing of as little as 4$~$ns. At $E_{rm b}=2.1 $GeV, systematic precision of $sim 1~mu$m is achieved for a beam size of $sim12~mu$m; this is expected to scale as $propto 1/sigma_{rm b}$ and $propto 1/E_{rm b}$. Achieving this precision requires comprehensive alignment and calibration of the detector, optical elements, and x-ray beam. Data from the xBSM have been used to extract characteristics of beam oscillations on long and short timescales, and to make detailed studies of low-emittance tuning, intra-beam scattering, electron cloud effects, and multi-bunch instabilities.