Speaker
Description
The NEXT setup [1] has been designed and built to study Neutron-rich, heavy, EXotic nuclei produced in multinucleon Transfer reactions. NEXT is a new experiment at the PARTREC facility in Groningen which has been recently installed in a dedicated beamline at the AGOR cyclotron [2]. The AGOR cyclotron at PARTREC is capable to deliver highly intense heavy ion beam at energies well suited for multinucleon transfer reactions at and above the Coulomb barrier.
NEXT consists of a solenoid pre-separator. Within the field of a 3-tesla strong, superconducting solenoid magnet heavy transfer products are separated from their light counterparts [3] and focused towards a gas-catcher [4]. The ions are extracted through a radiofrequency carpet into a novel ring-ion guide and buncher [5] from where they are injected into a MultiReflection Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer [6] for precision mass measurement and sample preparation for background free mass spectrometry. Thus, even very long-lived, heavy transfer products can be identified and studied with NEXT.
Our contribution will provide an overview of the NEXT setup and a report on the first beam on target experiments performed in summer 2025.
[1] J. Even, X. Chen, A. Soylu, P. Fischer, A. Karpov, V. Saiko, J. Saren, M. Schlaich, T. Schlathölter, L. Schweikhard, J. Uusitalo, and F. Wienholtz, The NEXT Project: Towards Production and Investigation of Neutron-Rich Heavy Nuclides, Atoms 10, 59 (2022).
[2] B. N. Jones, S. Brandenburg, and M. J. van Goethem, AGOR Status Report, CYC 2019 - Proc. 22nd Int. Conf. Cyclotrons Their Appl. 257 (2020).
[3] A. Soylu, X. Chen, J. Even, A. Karpov, V. Saiko, J. Sarén, and J. Uusitalo, Ion-Optical Simulations for the NEXT Solenoid Separator, Nucl. Instruments Methods Phys. Res. Sect. A Accel. Spectrometers, Detect. Assoc. Equip. 1067, 169674 (2024).
[4] A. Mollaebrahimi, B. Anđelić, J. Even, M. Block, M. Eibach, F. Giacoppo, N. Kalantar-Nayestanaki, O. Kaleja, H. R. Kremers, M. Laatiaoui, and S. Raeder, A Setup to Develop Novel Chemical Isobaric SEparation (CISE), Nucl. Instruments Methods Phys. Res. Sect. B Beam Interact. with Mater. Atoms 463, 508 (2020).
[5] X. Chen, J. Even, P. Fischer, M. Schlaich, T. Schlathölter, L. Schweikhard, and A. Soylu, Stacked-Ring Ion Guide for Cooling and Bunching Rare Isotopes, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 477, 116856 (2022).
[6] M. Schlaich, J. Fischer, P. Fischer, C. Klink, A. Obertelli, A. Schmidt, L. Schweikhard, and F. Wienholtz, A Multi-Reflection Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer for the Offline Ion Source of the PUMA Experiment, Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 495, 117166 (2024).
| Funding Agency | European Research Council (ERC-2018-STG, Grant agreement ID: 803740) |
|---|---|
| Classification | Low-energy and in-flight separators |
