C. Weber

The research reactor TRIGA Mainz is an ideal facility to provide neutron-rich nuclides with production rates sufficiently large for mass spectrometric and laser spectroscopic studies. Within the TRIGA-SPEC project, a Penning trap as well as a beam line for collinear laser spectroscopy are being installed. Several new developments will ensure high sensitivity of the trap setup enabling mass measurements even on a single ion. Besides neutron-rich fission products produced in the reactor, also heavy nuclides such as 235-U or 252-Cf can be investigated for the first time with an off-line ion source. The data provided by the mass measurements will be of interest for astrophysical calculations on the rapid neutron-capture process as well as for tests of mass models in the heavy-mass region. The laser spectroscopic measurements will yield model-independent information on nuclear ground-state properties such as nuclear moments and charge radii of neutron-rich nuclei of refractory elements far from stability. This publication describes the experimental setup as well as its present status.

Nuclides in the vicinity of 94Ag have been studied with the Penning trap mass spectrometer JYFLTRAP at the Ion-Guide Separator On-Line. The masses of the two-proton-decay daughter 92Rh and the beta-decay daughter 94Pd of the high-spin isomer in 94Ag have been measured, and the masses of 93Pd and 94Ag have been deduced. When combined with the data from the one-proton or two-proton-decay experiments, the results lead to contradictory mass excess values for the high-spin isomer in 94Ag, -46370(170) or -44970(100) keV, corresponding to excitation energies of 6960(400) or 8360(370) keV, respectively.

A new procedure to prepare isomerically clean samples of ions with a mass resolving power of more than 100,000 has been developed at the JYFLTRAP tandem Penning trap system. The method utilises a dipolar rf-excitation of the ion motion with separated oscillatory fields in the precision trap. During a subsequent retransfer to the purification trap, the contaminants are rejected and as a consequence, the remaining bunch is isomerically cleaned. This newly-developed method is suitable for very high-resolution cleaning and is at least a factor of five faster than the methods used so far in Penning trap mass spectrometry.