Although valence electrons are clearly delocalized in molecular bonding frameworks, chemists and physicists have long debated the question of whether the core vacancy created in a homonuclear diatomic molecule by absorption of a single x-ray photon is localized on one atom or delocalized over both. We have been able to clarify this question with an experiment that uses Auger electron angular emission patterns from molecular nitrogen after inner-shell ionization as an ultrafast probe of hole localization. The experiment, along with the accompanying theory, shows that observation of symmetry breaking (localization) or preservation (delocalization) depends on how the quantum entangled Bell state created by Auger decay is detected by the measurement.

We propose to install a storage ring at an ISOL-type radioactive beam facility for the first time. Specifically, we intend to install the heavy-ion, low-energy ring TSR at the HIE-ISOLDE facility in CERN, Geneva. Such a facility will provide a capability for experiments with stored secondary beams that is unique in the world. The envisaged physics programme is rich and varied, spanning from investigations of nuclear groundstate properties and reaction studies of astrophysical relevance, to investigations with highly-charged ions and pure isomeric beams. The TSR can also be used to remove isobaric contaminants from stored ion beams and for systematic studies within the neutrino beam programme. In addition to experiments performed using beams recirculating within the ring, cooled beams can also be extracted and exploited by external spectrometers for high-precision measurements. The existing TSR, which is presently in operation at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, is well-suited and can be employed for this purpose. The physics cases, technical details of the existing ring facility and of the beam requirements at HIE-ISOLDE, together with the cost, time and manpower estimates for the transfer, installation and commissioning of the TSR at ISOLDE are discussed in the present technical design report.

No abstract

We report the observation of an interference between the electric dipole (E1) and the magnetic quadrupole (M2) amplitudes for the linear polarization of the Ly-α1 (2p3/2→1s1/2) radiation of hydrogenlike uranium. This multipole mixing arises from the coupling of the ion to different multipole components of the radiation field. Our observation indicates a significant depolarization of the Ly-α1 radiation due to the E1-M2 amplitude mixing. It proves that a combined measurement of the linear polarization and of the angular distribution enables a very precise determination of the ratio of the E1 and the M2 transition amplitudes and the corresponding transition rates without any assumptions concerning the population mechanism for the 2p3/2 state.

The fast evaporative cooling of micrometer-sized water droplets in a vacuum offers the appealing possibility to investigate supercooled water-below the melting point but still a liquid-at temperatures far beyond the state of the art. However, it is challenging to obtain a reliable value of the droplet temperature under such extreme experimental conditions. Here, the observation of morphology-dependent resonances in the Raman scattering from a train of perfectly uniform water droplets allows us to measure the variation in droplet size resulting from evaporative mass losses with an absolute precision of better than 0.2%. This finding proves crucial to an unambiguous determination of the droplet temperature. In particular, we find that a fraction of water droplets with an initial diameter of 6379±12  nm remain liquid down to 230.6±0.6  K. Our results question temperature estimates reported recently for larger supercooled water droplets and provide valuable information on the hydrogen-bond network in liquid water in the hard-to-access deeply supercooled regime.

The K shell excitation of H-like uranium (U(91+)) in relativistic collisions with different gaseous targets has been studied at the experimental storage ring at GSI Darmstadt. By performing measurements with different targets as well as with different collision energies, we were able to observe for the first time the effect of electron-impact excitation (EIE) process in the heaviest hydrogenlike ion. The large fine-structure splitting in H-like uranium allowed us to unambiguously resolve excitation into different L shell levels. State-of-the-art calculations performed within the relativistic framework which include excitation mechanisms due to both protons (nucleus) and electrons are in good agreement with the experimental findings. Moreover, our experimental data clearly demonstrate the importance of including the generalized Breit interaction in the treatment of the EIE process.

No abstract

We report the first measurement of low-energy proton-capture cross sections of 124 Xe in a heavyion storage ring. 124 Xe 54+ ions of five different beam energies between 5.5 AMeV and 8 AMeV were stored to collide with a windowless hydrogen target. The 125 Cs reaction products were directly detected. The interaction energies are located on the high energy tail of the Gamow window for hot, explosive scenarios such as supernovae and X-ray binaries. The results serve as an important test of predicted astrophysical reaction rates in this mass range. Good agreement in the prediction of the astrophysically important proton width at low energy is found, with only a 30% difference between measurement and theory. Larger deviations are found above the neutron emission threshold, where also neutron-and γ-widths significantly impact the cross sections. The newly established experimental method is a very powerful tool to investigate nuclear reactions on rare ion beams at low center-of-mass energies.Charged-particle induced reactions like (p,γ) and (α,γ) and their reverse reactions play a central role in the quantitative description of explosive scenarios like supernovae [1] or X-ray binaries [2], where temperatures above 1 GK can be reached. The energy interval in which the reactions most likely occur under astrophysical conditions is called the Gamow window [3,4]. Experimentalists usually face two major challenges when approaching the Gamow window: firstly, the relatively low center-of-mass energies of only a few MeV or less, and secondly, the rapid decrease of cross sections with energy. The high stopping power connected to low-energy beams typically limits the amount of target material, and thus the achievable luminosity. A measurement of small cross sections, on the contrary, requires high luminosities.The description of charged-particle processes in explosive nucleosynthesis -e.g., the γ process occurring in core-collapse and thermonuclear supernovae [5-7] and the rp process on the surface of mass-accreting neutron stars [8] -requires large reaction networks including very short-lived nuclei. Experimental data are extremely scarce [9], especially in the mass region A > 70, and the modelling relies on calculated cross sections. It is therefore essential to test the theory and its central input parameters. In this Letter we report the first study of the 124 Xe(p,γ) 125 Cs reaction. The cross section is measured on the high energy tail of the Gamow peak, which is located between 2.74 and 5.42 MeV at 3.5 GK in the γ process [4]. While the 124 Xe(p,γ) reaction serves as a major milestone for improving the experimental technique