The highest precision in direct mass measurements is obtained with Penning trap mass spectrometry. Most experiments use the interconversion of the magnetron and cyclotron motional modes of the stored ion due to excitation by external radiofrequency-quadrupole fields. In this work a new excitation scheme, Ramsey's method of time-separated oscillatory fields, has been successfully tested. It has been shown to reduce significantly the uncertainty in the determination of the cyclotron frequency and thus of the ion mass of interest. The theoretical description of the ion motion excited with Ramsey's method in a Penning trap and subsequently the calculation of the resonance line shapes for different excitation times, pulse structures, and detunings of the quadrupole field has been carried out in a quantum mechanical framework and is discussed in detail in the preceding article in this journal by M. Kretzschmar. Here, the new excitation technique has been applied with the ISOLTRAP mass spectrometer at ISOLDE/CERN for mass measurements on stable as well as short-lived nuclides. The experimental resonances are in agreement with the theoretical predictions and a precision gain close to a factor of four was achieved compared to the use of the conventional excitation technique.

Abstract. ISOLTRAP is a Penning trap mass spectrometer for high-precision mass measurements on short-lived nuclides installed at the on-line isotope separator ISOLDE at CERN. The masses of close to 300 radionuclides have been determined up to now. The applicability of Penning trap mass spectrometry to mass measurements of exotic nuclei has been extended considerably at ISOLTRAP by improving and developing this double Penning trap mass spectrometer over the past two decades. The accurate determination of nuclear binding energies far from stability includes nuclei that are produced at rates less than 100 ions/s and with half-lives well below 100 ms. The mass-resolving power reaches 10 7 corresponding to 10 keV for medium heavy nuclei and the uncertainty of the resulting mass values has been pushed down to below 10 −8 . The article describes technical developments achieved since 1996 and the present performance of ISOLTRAP.

High-precision mass and charge radius measurements on ;{17-22}Ne, including the proton-halo candidate 17Ne, have been performed with Penning trap mass spectrometry and collinear laser spectroscopy. The 17Ne mass uncertainty is improved by factor 50, and the charge radii of ;{17-19}Ne are determined for the first time. The fermionic molecular dynamics model explains the pronounced changes in the ground-state structure. It attributes the large charge radius of 17Ne to an extended proton configuration with an s;{2} component of about 40%. In 18Ne the smaller radius is due to a significantly smaller s;{2} component. The radii increase again for ;{19-22}Ne due to cluster admixtures.

Ramsey's method of separated oscillatory fields is applied to the excitation of the cyclotron motion of short-lived ions in a Penning trap to improve the precision of their measured mass values. The theoretical description of the extracted ion-cyclotron-resonance line shape is derived and its correctness demonstrated experimentally by measuring the mass of the short-lived 38 Ca nuclide with an uncertainty of 1:1 10 ÿ8 using the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at CERN. The mass of the superallowed beta emitter 38 Ca contributes for testing the theoretical corrections of the conserved-vector-current hypothesis of the electroweak interaction. It is shown that the Ramsey method applied to Penning trap mass measurements yields a statistical uncertainty similar to that obtained by the conventional technique but 10 times faster. Thus the technique is a new powerful tool for high-precision mass measurements. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.162501 PACS numbers: 21.10.Dr, 07.75.+h, 27.30.+t, 32.10.Bi In 1989 the Nobel prize for physics was awarded in part to N. F. Ramsey [1] in recognition of his molecular beam resonance method with spatially separated oscillatory fields [2,3]. In 1992, G. Bollen et al. [4] demonstrated the use of time-separated oscillatory fields for the excitation of the cyclotron motion of an ion confined in the Penning trap spectrometer ISOLTRAP. Along with further experiments [5,6], this showed that the method could improve the precision of mass measurements with Penning trap -on the condition that a sound theoretical basis be provided to describe the shape of the ion-cyclotron resonance curve.In this Letter, we introduce the correct theoretical description of the application of the Ramsey method to ions stored in a Penning trap. We also demonstrate its validity for the first time with a mass measurement. Comparison with the conventional excitation scheme [7,8] shows that the linewidth of the resonance is reduced by almost a factor of 2 and the statistical uncertainty of the extracted resonance frequency is more than a factor of 3 smaller. We show that the Ramsey method allows a measurement with the same statistical uncertainty but 10 times more rapidly. Faster experiments are desirable in any field since they make measurements less vulnerable to systematic errors and equipment failure. In particular, measurements of short-lived species at radioactive-beam facilities [9] benefit greatly due to the low production rates and extremely limited beam time. Such is the case of 38 Ca, measured here (T 1=2 4408 ms). This nuclide is of interest for testing the conserved-vector-current (CVC) hypothesis of the standard model of particle interactions [10,11] for which a particularly high precision is required (10 ÿ8 ).The prerequisite for the successful implementation of the Ramsey method to stored ions is the detailed understanding of the observed time-of-flight cyclotron resonance curves using time-separated oscillatory fields. While here only the most important parts of the theory and its experimental...