Off-line test of the KISS gas cell

The KEK Isotope Separation System (KISS) has been constructed at RIKEN to study the β-decay properties of neutron-rich isotopes with neutron numbers around N = 126 for application to astrophysics. A key component of KISS is a gas cell filled with argon gas at a pressure of 50 kPa to stop and collect the unstable nuclei, where the isotopes of interest will be selectively ionized using laser resonance ionization. We have performed off-line tests to study the basic properties of the gas cell and of KISS using nickel and iron filaments placed in the gas cell.