Physical Society Colloquium

Powerful techniques have been developed in recent years in order to inject, store, accumulate, cool, and finally investigate charged particles in different kinds of trapping devices such as storage rings, Paul or Penning traps. In this way novel experimental approaches could be realized, and high efficiency as well as accuracy are achieved. An overview will be given on recent advances in the field of ion trapping for atomic and nuclear physics. The talk will address mass measurements of short-lived nuclides and highly-charged ions, the change of the nuclear half life due to bound beta decay, and the measurement of g-factor of the electron in hydrogen-like systems. The latter opens the door to test bound-state QED and to determine with high accuracy the electron mass, the fine structure constant, or nuclear properties as, for example, the charge radii of nuclei far off stability. An outlook will be given on the HITRAP project aiming at g-factor and atomic binding energy measurements in extreme fields (e.g. U91+) and on the SHIPTRAP facility presently being built up for studies of atomic, nuclear and chemical properties of isotopes in the region of the chart of nuclei above uranium.

Friday, September 14th 2001, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112)