Probing photo-ionization: Experiments on positive streamers in pure gasses and mixtures

Positive streamers are thought to propagate by photo-ionization whose parameters depend on the nitrogen:oxygen ratio. Therefore we study streamers in nitrogen with 20%, 0.2% and 0.01% oxygen and in pure nitrogen, as well as in pure oxygen and argon. Our new experimental set-up guarantees contamination of the pure gases to be well below 1 ppm. Streamers in oxygen are difficult to measure as they emit considerably less light in the sensitivity range of our fast ICCD camera than the other gasses. Streamers in pure nitrogen and in all nitrogen/oxygen mixtures look generally similar, but become somewhat thinner and branch more with decreasing oxygen content. In pure nitrogen the streamers can branch so much that they resemble feathers. This feature is even more pronounced in pure argon, with approximately 10^2 hair tips/cm^3 in the feathers at 200 mbar; this density could be interpreted as the free electron density creating avalanches towards the streamer stem. It is remarkable that the streamer velocity is essentially the same for similar voltage and pressure in all nitrogen/oxygen mixtures as well as in pure nitrogen, while the oxygen concentration and therefore the photo-ionization lengths vary by more than five orders of magnitude. Streamers in argon have essentially the same velocity as well. The physical similarity of streamers at different pressures is confirmed in all gases; the minimal diameters are smaller than in earlier measurements.Comment: 28 pages, 14 figures. Major differences with v1: - appendix and spectra removed - subsection regarding effects of repetition frequency added - many more smaller change

First spatial separation of a heavy ion isomeric beam with a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer

211 Po ions in the ground and isomeric states were produced via 238 U projectile fragmentation at 1000 MeV/u. The 211 Po ions were spatially separated in flight from the primary beam and other reaction products by the fragment separator FRS. The ions were energy-bunched, slowed-down and thermalized in a gas-filled cryogenic stopping cell (CSC). They were then extracted from the CSC and injected into a high-resolution multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS). The excitation energy of the isomer and, for the first time, the isomeric-to-ground state ratio were determined from the measured mass spectrum. In the subsequent experimental step, the isomers were spatially separated from the ions in the ground state by an ion deflector and finally collected with a silicon detector for decay spectroscopy. This pioneering experimental result opens up unique perspectives for isomer-resolved studies. With this versatile experimental method new isomers with half-lives longer than a few milliseconds can be discovered and their decay properties can be measured with highest sensitivity and selectivity. These experiments can be extended to studies with isomeric beams in nuclear reactions