A new technique has been developed at TRIUMFs TITAN facility to perform in-trap decay spectroscopy. The aim of this technique is to eventually measure weak electron capture branching ratios (ECBRs) and by this to consequently determine GT matrix elem
ents of $betabeta$ decaying nuclei. These branching ratios provide important input to the theoretical description of these decays. The feasibility and power of the technique is demonstrated by measuring the ECBR of $^{124}$Cs.
An experimental setup is being developed to extract Ba ions from a high-pressure Xe gas environment. It aims to transport Ba ions from 10 bar Xe to vacuum conditions. The setup utilizes a converging-diverging nozzle in combination with a radio-freque
ncy (RF) funnel to move Ba ions into vacuum through the pressure drop of several orders of magnitude. This technique is intended to be used in a future multi-ton detector investigating double-beta decay in $^{136}$Xe. Efficient extraction and detection of Ba ions, the decay product of Xe, would allow for a background-free measurement of the $^{136}$Xe double-beta decay.
Bradbury Nielsen gates are well known devices used to switch ion beams and are typically applied in mass or mobility spectrometers for separating beam constituents by their different flight or drift times. A Bradbury Nielsen gate consists of two inte
rleaved sets of electrodes. If two voltages of the same amplitude but opposite polarity are applied the gate is closed, and for identical (zero) potential the gate is open. Whereas former realizations of the device employ actual wires resulting in difficulties with winding, fixing and tensioning them, our approach is to use two grids photo-etched from a metallic foil. This design allows for simplified construction of gates covering large beam sizes up to at least 900,mm$^2$ with variable wire spacing down to 250,textmu m. By changing the grids the wire spacing can be varied easily. A gate of this design was installed and systematically tested at TRIUMFs ion trap facility, TITAN, for use with radioactive beams to separate ions with different mass-to-charge ratios by their time-of-flight.
We present a description of the Radio Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ) ion trap built as part of the TITAN facility. It consists of a gas-filled, segmented, linear Paul trap and is the first stage of the TITAN setup with the purpose of cooling and bunching
radioactive ion beams delivered from ISAC-TRIUMF. This is the first such device to be driven digitally, i.e., using a high voltage ($V_{pp} = rm{400 , V}$), wide bandwidth ($0.2 < f < 1.2 , rm{MHz}$) square-wave as compared to the typical sinusoidal wave form. Results from the commissioning of the device as well as systematic studies with stable and radioactive ions are presented including efficiency measurements with stable $^{133}$Cs and radioactive $^{124, 126}$Cs. A novel and unique mode of operation of this device is also demonstrated where the cooled ion bunches are extracted in reverse mode, i.e., in the same direction as previously injected.
