On-line ion cooling and bunching for collinear laser spectroscopy -: art. no. 094801

A new method has been developed for increasing the sensitivity of collinear laser spectroscopy. The method utilizes an ion-trapping technique in which a continuous low-energy ion beam is cooled and accumulated in a linear Paul trap and subsequently released as a short (10-20 mus) bunch. In collinear laser measurements the signal-to-noise ratio has been improved by a factor of 2 x 10(4), allowing spectroscopic measurements to be made with ion-beam fluxes of similar to50 ions s(-1). The bunching method has been demonstrated in an on-line isotope shift and hyperfine structure measurement on radioactive Hf-175.