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We demonstrate that abundant quantities of short-lived beta unstable ions can be trapped in a novel transparent Paul trap and that their decay products can directly be detected in coincidence. Low energy 6He+ (807 ms half-life) ions were extracted from the SPIRAL source at GANIL, then decelerated, cooled, and bunched by means of the buffer gas cooling technique. More than 10(8) ions have been stored over a measuring period of six days, and about 10(5) decay coincidences between the beta particles and the 6Li++ recoiling ions have been recorded. The technique can be extended to other short-lived species, opening new possibilities for trap assisted decay experiments.

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The potential energy curves and spectroscopic constants of the ground and excited states of the RbAr van der Waals system have been determined using a one-electron pseudopotential approach. This technique is used to replace the effect of the Rb(+) core and the electron-Ar interactions by effective potentials. The core-core interaction for Rb(+)Ar was incorporated using the accurate CCSD(T) potential of Hickling et al. [Hickling, H. L.; Viehland, L. A.; Shepherd, D. T.; Soldán, P.; Lee, E. P. F.; Wright, T. G. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2004, 6, 4233-4239]. This model reduces the number of active electrons of the RbAr van der Waals systems to just the single valence electron, permitting the use of very large basis sets for the Rb and Ar atoms. Using this approach, the potential energy curves of the ground and excited states dissociating into Rb(5s, 5p, 4d, 6s, 6p, 6d, and 7s) + Ar are calculated at the SCF level. Spin-orbit interaction was also considered within a semiempirical scheme for the states dissociating into Rb(5p) and Rb(6p). Spectroscopic constants are derived and compared with the available theoretical and experimental data. Such comparisons for RbAr show very good agreement for the ground and the first excited states. Furthermore, we have predicted the B(2)Σ(+)(1/2) ← X(2)Σ(+), A(2)Π(1/2) ← X(2)Σ(+), A(2)Π(3/2) ← X(2)Σ(+), A(2)Π(3/2) ← X(2)Σ(+), 5(2)Σ(+) ← X(2)Σ(+), 3(2)Π(1/2) ← X(2)Σ(+), and 3(2)Π(3/2) ← X(2)Σ(+) absorption spectra.

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The standard model of the electroweak interaction describes beta-decay in the well-known V-A form. Nevertheless, the most general Hamiltonian of a beta-decay includes also other possible interaction types, e.g. scalar (S) and tensor (T) contributions, which are not fully ruled out yet experimentally. The WITCH experiment aims to study a possible admixture of these exotic interaction types in nuclear beta-decay by a precise measurement of the shape of the recoil ion energy spectrum. The experimental set-up couples a double Penning trap system and a retardation spectrometer. The set-up is installed in ISOLDE/CERN and was recently shown to be fully operational. The current status of the experiment is presented together with the data acquired during the 2006 campaign, showing the first recoil ion energy spectrum obtained. The data taking procedure and corresponding data acquisition system are described in more detail. Several further technical improvements are briefly reviewed.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, conference proceedings EMIS 2007 (http://emis2007.ganil.fr), published also in NIM B: doi:10.1016/j.nimb.2008.05.15

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Abstract. The WITCH experiment (Weak Interaction Trap for CHarged particles) will search for exotic interactions by investigating the β-ν angular correlation via the measurement of the recoil energy spectrum after β decay. As a first step the recoil ions from the β − decay of 124 In stored in a Penning trap have been detected. The evidence for the detection of recoil ions is shown and the properties of the ion cloud that forms the radioactive source for the experiment in the Penning trap are presented.PACS. 23.40.Bw Weak-interaction and lepton (including neutrino) aspects -29.30.Aj Charged-particle spectrometers: electric and magnetic -37.10.Ty ion trapping