Miscellaneous publications

The heavy ion synchrotron/storage ring facility at GSI, SIS/ESR, provides intense beams of cooled, highly-charged ions up to naked uranium (U92+). By electron capture during ion-atom collisions in the gas target of the ESR or by recombination at ion-electron encounters in the 'electron cooler" excited states are populated. The detailed structure of very heavy one-, two- and three-electron ions is studied. The different mechanisms leading to the excited states are described, as well as the new experimental tools now available for a detailed spectroscopy of these interesting systems. Special emphasis is given to X-ray transitions to the groundstates in H- and He-like systems. For the heaviest species the groundstate Lambshift can now be probed on an accuracy level of better than 10% using solid-state X-ray detectors. Applying dispersive X-ray analysing techniques, this accuracy will certainly be improved in future. However, utilizing the dielectronic recombination resonances for a spectroscopy, the structure in Li-like heavy ions can already be probed now on the sub eV level.

Charge state distributions for 3-16 MeV/u Ni ions penetrating C-stripper foils measured during UNILAC operation over the past decade are summarized. The results agree reasonably well with calculations including excitation, stabilization and charge changing processes. Special emphasis is given to the fraction of emerging few-electron ions, i.e. from naked to Li-like ions. The results are applied to a beam foil spectroscopy experiment investigating intra-L shell and Rydberg transitions in He- and Li-like Ni ions.

The Lyman a transitions of hydrogenlike uranium associated with electron capture were measured in collisions of stored bare U92+ ions with gaseous targets at the storage ring ESR. By applying x-ray-particle coincidence techniques the ground-state transition energies in the rest frame could be determined with a precision of about 600 ppm. The experimental result is in excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction for the ground-state Lamb shift in hydrogenlike uranium and is already sensitive to the 2s Lamb shift.

Bound-state beta- decay was observed for the first time by storing bare Dy-163(66)66+ ions in a heavy-ion storage ring. From the number of Ho-163(67)66+ daughter ions, measured as a function of the storage time, a half-life of 47+/-5/4 d was derived.