Speaker
Description
Almost all nuclei heavier than iron are produced through neutron capture nucleosynthesis, about half of them by the rapid (r) process. One of the limiting factors in understanding the r-process is the need for neutron capture cross-section measurements on unstable nuclei. As shown with the recent measurement of $^{88}$Zr (Shusterman et al., Nature 2019), neutron capture cross-sections can exhibit unpredictable behaviour.
We propose a novel method of measuring neutron capture cross-sections of short-lived nuclei. Neutron-rich nuclei produced via neutron-induced fission inside of a gas-filled stopping cell will form a mass-selected cooled low-energy beam, which will be transported into a linear Paul trap (coined ‘NG-Trap’), forming a target. This ‘cloud target’ of up to $10^{10}$ ions will then be irradiated with neutrons. The reaction products will then be identified and counted using a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass-spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS), thus extracting the capture cross-sections.
This poster will present a breakthrough achievement towards the goal of generating the required ‘cloud target’. A demonstrator system with an ion capacity of more than $10^{10}$ ions will be presented. This system is a major milestone of the plan to install a high-capacity trap at the Soreq Applied Research Accelerator Facility (SARAF), currently under construction in Yavne, Israel.
