On-line experimental results of an argon gas cell-based laser ion source (KEK Isotope Separation System)

KEK Isotope Separation System (KISS) has been developed at RIKEN to produce neutron rich isotopes with N=126 to study the β-decay properties for application to astrophysics. The KISS is an element-selective mass-separation system which consists of an argon gas cell-based on laser ion source for atomic number selection and an ISOL mass-separation system. The argon gas cell of KISS is a key component to stop and collect the unstable nuclei produced in a multi-nucleon transfer reaction, where the isotopes of interest will be selectively ionized using laser resonance ionization. We have performed off- and on-line experiments to study the basic properties of the gas cell as well as of the KISS. We successfully extracted the laser-ionized stable 56Fe (direct implantation of a 56Fe beam into the gas cell) atoms and 198Pt (emitted from the 198Pt target by elastic scattering with a 136Xe beam) atoms from the KISS during the commissioning on-line experiments. We furthermore extracted laser-ionized unstable 199Pt atoms and confirmed that the measured half-life was in good agreement with the reported value.