The HITRAP Facility

FIGURE 7.3 Side view of the HITRAP facility. The highly charged ions come from the left and are decelerated by LINAC and RF quadrupole structures. They are injected at an energy of 6 keV/u into the Cooler Penning trap where they are trapped and cooled. After cooling to liquid-helium temperature they are ejected and transported with very low energies to the experiments on top of the platform. 

FIGURE 7.4 Photographs taken from the same position in the ESR Experimental Hall and showing the construction of the HITRAP platform. Left situation in 2004 before construction. Middle situation in 2005 when the platform was erected for the huts housing the electronics of the HITRAP facility and of the HITRAP experiments, for RF power supplies and other devices. Right panel situation in 2006 when the platform is ready, the huts are in place, and the installations are almost completed. 

FIGURE 7.5 Schematic overview of the beamline on the experimental platform. The experiments are indicated by the numbers H1-H6 (see Table 7.1). Beam transport calculations have been performed leading to the arrangement of ion optical elements as shown in the figure. The ion beam enters this section from below and travels from the extreme left-hand side to the right. The EBIS is an off-line ion source for tests of the systems, the MPS (multi-passage spectrometer) will feed the EBIS ion beam into the system when needed. 

Preparation of infrastructure (safety, media supply, controls, RF) Ongoing 

Test of HITRAP low-energy beam transport and Cooler trap with EBIS Mid 2007 

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A new platform was built inside the ESR experimental hall at GSI to house huts for electronics for the local control of the HITRAP facility and for the different HITRAP experiments and to provide space for the required infrastructure of the HITRAP facility such as supplies for radiofrequency, electricity and water. A hole was drilled through the concrete above the re-injection channel, which will be used for the beamline to transport the ions from the Cooler trap towards the setups. The construction of this platform is illustrated by the photo series in Figure 7.4. 

Because the HITRAP facility will not be able to continuously obtain the ESR beam for testing the Cooler trap and the experimental setups, it was decided to install an electron beam ion source (EBIS), which was available from the University of Frankfurt, on the platform for off-line tests. This source (MAXEBIS) is currently being tested and will be used to tune the low-energy beam line (LEBT) towards the Cooler trap, and for tests of the Cooler trap itself. Afterwards, the components will be moved to the HITRAP facility. A more complete overview of the time planning for the construction of the HITRAP facility is presented in Table 7.2. 

As can be seen from Figure 7.1, the new trapping facility, HITRAP, will be inserted into the re-injection channel between the ESR and the SIS. The new facility will broaden the current research field and open up several new ones, as indicated by the list in Figure 7.2. The combination of high charge states and very low kinetic... 

The construction of fhe HITRAP facility, which is being carried out in close collaboration between the GSI Divisions for Infrasfructure, Accelerators and Atomic Physics and the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Frankfurt, started in the beginning of 2005 when appropriate funds were available. Commissioning... 

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