We present a general technique for precision spectroscopy of atoms that lack suitable transitions for efficient laser cooling, internal state preparation, and detection. In our implementation with trapped atomic ions, an auxiliary "logic" ion provides sympathetic laser cooling, state initialization, and detection for a simultaneously trapped "spectroscopy" ion. Detection is achieved by applying...

A laser ion source can provide high current, highly charged ions with a simple structure. However, it was not easy to control the ion pulse width. To provide a longer ion beam pulse, the plasma drift length, which is the distance between laser target and extraction point, has to be extended and as a result the plasma is diluted severely. Previously, we applied a solenoid field to prevent reduct...

A novel instrumental setup for measuring infrared photodissociation spectra of buffer gas cooled, mass-selected ions is described and tested. It combines a cryogenically cooled, linear radio frequency ion trap with a tandem mass spectrometer, optimally coupling continuous ion sources to pulsed laser experiments. The use of six independently adjustable DC potentials superimposed over the trappin...

I report on work aimed towards realising Quantum Information Processing with single 40Ca+ ions in a Penning trap, where trapping is achieved using static electric and magnetic fields. Unlike RF traps, in the Penning trap there is no heating due to micromotion. Therefore the qubit should in principle have a longer decoherence time. However in the Penning trap, the internal levels of the ion shif...

Many spectroscopic studies require a source of coherent cw radiation tunable in the uv. Continuous wave radiation in the 257-360-nm range has been generated by sum frequency mixing, in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) and its isomorphs, selected output lines from an argon or krypton ion laser with the output of a cw dye laser. Recent studies of mixing in potassium pentaborate (KB5) using pu...

The mass spectra for both horizontal and vertical polarizations and the angular distributions of fragment ions arising from Coulomb explosion of tetrahedral methyl iodide (CH3I) ions, obtained at a laser intensity of 1016 W cm−2 are presented. All fragment ion distributions are peaked along the direction corresponding to collinearity of the laser electric field with the time-of-flight mass spec...

Laser driven ion acceleration has been the focus of considerable research efforts since multi-MeV energies were first demonstrated. Most experiments use solid state laser pulses focused onto thin foil targets. However, recent progress in CO2 laser technology allows for the creation of intense pulses at lambda ∼10 μm. The longer wavelength permits the use of low density targets. In these conditi...

Electronic spectra are reported for the metal cluster (Tef) and metal cluster complex (Ag+-benzene, Mg'-C02) cations. These ions are generated by laser vaporization in a pulsed nozzle source, jet-cooled, mass-selected with a reflectron time-of-flight spectrometer, and dissociated on resonance with a tunable dye laser. Electronic excitation spectra are recorded by monitoring the appearance of th...

We study transient atomic and plasma processes in the new parameter regime of hot dense matter, produced by an intense ultrashort laser pulse. Speci"cally, we study the e!ects of extremely high "elds on ion electronic structure. These high "elds are achieved in either of two ways: (1) by the "eld of unscreened ion charges in a plasma (&109 V/cm), which result in strongly coupled e!ects such as ...

The generation of muon-antimuon pairs is calculated in the collision of an ultrarelativistic bare ion with an intense x-ray laser beam. The reaction proceeds nonlinearly via absorption of two laser photons. By systematic study throughout the nuclear chart, we show that the interplay between the nuclear charge and size, along with the possibility of nuclear excitation leads to saturation of the ...