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# Recent Developments in Superstring Theory hep-lat/0011073

## 1 String theory: pre-1994

As we all know, quantum field theory has been extremely successful in providing a description of elementary particles and their interactions. However, it does not work so well for gravity. The reason for this is ultraviolet divergences. In particular Feynman graphs involving gravitons, of the type shown in Fig.1, give divergent answers which cannot be made finite by standard renormalization procedure. String theory is an attempt to solve this problem.

The basic idea in string theory is quite simple. According to this theory, different elementary particles which we observe in nature are different vibrational states of a one dimensional object, i.e. a string. In other words, instead of having different kinds of elementary particles, we have only one kind of string, and the differences in the observed properties of elementary particles arise because they correspond to different quantum states of this string. Strings can be closed with no ends or open with suitable boundary condition at the two ends, as shown in Fig.2.

At the first sight, this would seem to contradict what we know about elementary particles like electrons and quarks: they behave like particles rather than one dimensional objects. However, when one estimates the typical size of a string, one finds that this size is of the order of $`10^{33}`$cm $`(10^{19}GeV)^1`$.111This size is controlled by the energy per unit length of the string, known as the string tension, which, in turn, is determined from the observed value of the Newton’s constant of gravitation. As we shall see later, large radius compactification can drastically change the estimate of the string size, but it is still smaller than the distance scale that can be probed by current accelerators. This is much smaller than the distance scale which can be probed by present day accelerators. Thus there is no immediate contradiction with experiments, since strings of such a small size will appear point-like in present day experiments.

There is a well defined procedure for quantizing a string without violating Lorentz invariance. It turns out that

* Quantum string theories do not suffer from any ultraviolet divergence.
* Spectrum of a string theory contains a particle which has all the properties of a graviton $``$ the mediator of gravitational interactions.

Thus string theory gives a finite quantum theory of gravity + other stuff.

There are however several problems with string theory. They are as follows:

* String theory is consistent only in (9+1) dimensional space-time instead of the (3+1) dimensional space-time in which we seem to live.
* Instead of a single consistent string theory, there are five consistent string theories in (9+1) dimensions. They are called type IIA, type IIB, type I, SO(32) heterotic, and $`E_8\times E_8`$ heterotic string theories. On the other hand it is desirable that we have a single theory, as there is only one nature which string theory attempts to describe.

It turns out that the first problem is resolved via a procedure called compactification. The second problem is partially resolved due to a property of string theory called duality; this will be discussed in the next section.

I shall now briefly discuss the idea of compactification. The idea in fact is quite simple: take 6 of the 9 spatial directions to be small and compact. As long as the sizes of the compact directions are smaller than the reach of the present day accelerators, the world will appear to be (3+1) dimensional. Since it is hard to draw a 9-dimensional space, a caricature of compactification has been shown in Fig.3 which demonstrates how a 2-dimensional space can be made to look like a one dimensional space. Here we take the two dimensional space to be the surface of a cylinder of radius $`R`$ and infinite length. For large $`R`$ (larger than the range of the most powerful telescope) the space will look like an ordinary two dimensional space of infinite extent in all directions. whereas for small $`R`$ (smaller than the resolution of the most powerful microscope) the space will look one dimensional. This way an intrinsically two dimensional space can be made to look one dimensional. The same idea works in making an intrinsically 9 dimensional space look 3 dimensional.

It turns out that not all six dimensional compact manifolds can be used for this purpose, but there are many choices. A particularly important class of six dimensional manifolds, which can be used for string compactification, are known as Calabi-Yau manifolds. Thus each string theory is (9+1) dimensions gives rise to many different string theories in (3+1) dimensions after compactification. Some of these theories come tantalizingly close to the observed universe. In particular, they have:

* Gauge group containing $`SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)`$
* Chiral fermions
* Three generations of quarks and leptons
* N=1 supersymmetry

etc. However, so far nobody has found a suitable compactification scheme which gives results in complete quantitative agreement with the observed universe (including masses of various elementary particles).

## 2 String Theory: 1994-1996

### 2.1 Duality in String Theory

Existence of duality symmetries in string theory started out as a conjecture and still remains a conjecture. However so many non-trivial tests of these conjectures have been performed by now that most people in the field are convinced of the validity of these conjectures.

A duality conjecture is a statement of equivalence between two or more apparently different string theories. Two of the most important features of a duality relation are as follows:

* Under a duality map, often an elementary particle in one string theory gets mapped to a composite particle in a dual string theory and vice versa. Thus classification of particles into elementary and composite loses significance as it depends on which particular theory we use to describe the system.
* Duality often relates a weakly coupled theory to a strongly coupled theory. If we denote by $`g`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ the coupling constants in the two theories related by the duality map, then often there is a simple relation between them of the form:

$$g=(\stackrel{~}{g})^1.$$
(2.1)
Thus a perturbation expansion in $`g`$ contains information about non-perturbative effects in $`\stackrel{~}{g}`$ in the dual theory. In particular, tree level (classical) results in one theory is given by the sum of perturbative and non-perturbative results in the dual theory.

From this it should be clear that duality is a property of the quantum string theory and not its classical limit.

I shall now give some examples of duality:

* SO(32) heterotic string theory has been found to be dual to type I string theory in (9+1) dimensions.
* SO(32) (as well as $`E_8\times E_8`$) heterotic string theory compactified on a four dimensional torus $`T^4`$ has been found to be dual to type IIA string theory compactified on a non-trivial four dimensional compact manifold called $`K3`$.
* Type IIB string theory has been found to be self dual, i.e. the theory at coupling constant $`g`$ has been found to be equivalent to the same theory with coupling constant $`1/g`$.
* The SO(32) (as well as $`E_8\times E_8`$) heterotic string theory, compactified on a six dimensional torus $`T^6`$, has been found to be self-dual in the same sense.

Since duality relates different compactifications of different string theories, it provides us with a unified picture of all string theories. According to our new understanding based on duality, there is a single underlying theory $``$ which I shall call the $`U`$-theory $``$ with many degenerate vacua labelled by a set of parameters. Fig. 4 gives a schematic representation of this parameter space. In some special limits, the $`U`$-theory can be described by one of the (compactified) weakly coupled string theories. These special regions have been shaded in the figure. The rest of the regions represent string theories at finite / strong coupling. Note that besides the five corners labelling five weakly coupled string theories, there is another corner called $`M`$. This turns out to be a (10+1) dimensional theory, whose low energy limit is the (10+1) dimensional supergravity theory. Often people use the same symbol $`M`$ to describe this special corner as well as the whole region of the parameter space, but I shall reserve the name $`M`$ for this special corner, and use the symbol $`U`$ for the underlying theory with the full parameter space.

Thus we see that using the idea of duality, we can combine all string theories into a single theory, with a big parameter space. It turns out that these parameters themselves are dynamical, being related to vacuum expectation values of various fields. The ultimate dream of a string theorist is that when we fully understand the dynamics of string theory, we shall find some dynamical principle which determines a unique point in this parameter space, and that this point will correctly describe the nature that we see.

### 2.2 D-branes

Dirichlet(D)-branes are soliton like configurations in type IIA/IIB/I string theories. However, the description of D-branes is quite different from the way we normally describe a conventional soliton. To understand this distinction, let us review the way a conventional soliton is described in a quantum field theory:

1. First we construct a time independent solution of the classical equations of motion with energy density localised around a $`p`$-dimensional spatial hypersurface. We shall call such a solution a $`p`$-brane soliton. Thus for example a 0-brane corresponds to a particle like soliton, a 1-brane corresponds to a string like soliton, a 2-brane corresponds to a membrane like soliton and so on.
2. Next we identify the fluctuation modes of various fields around this background solution which are localised around the brane. These modes describe the fluctuation of the brane around its equilibrium position, and include for example oscillation modes of the brane in directions transverse to the brane.
3. We then construct the $`(p+1)`$ dimensional field theory which describes the dynamics of these modes. (This can be derived from the original field theory whose soliton we are analysing.) This field theory describes the classical dynamics of the soliton solution.
4. In order to study the quantum dynamics of this soliton, we quantize this field theory.

In describing a D-brane we start from step 4 and work backwards.

I shall now give explicit description of D-branes in type IIA and type IIB string theories. Elementary excitations in type IIA / IIB string theories are closed strings. D-$`p`$-branes in these theories are $`p`$-dimensional soliton like objects whose quantum dynamics is described by the theory of open strings whose ends are constrained to move on the D-brane. This has been illustrated in Fig.5. Starting from this description we can work backwards and derive all the properties of these branes. It turns out that type IIB string theory has stable (BPS) D-$`p`$-branes for $`p`$-odd (1, 3, 5, 7, 9), whereas type IIA string theory has stable D-$`p`$-branes for $`p`$-even (0, 2, 4, 6, 8). In particular, type IIB string theory contains a D9-brane which fills all space. For this theory one can also add to this list the $`p=1`$ brane, representing a configuration that is localised not only in all space directions but also in the time direction. This is called the D-instanton.

Under duality often elementary closed string states in one theory get mapped to D-brane states in the dual theory. Indeed, this is how the importance of D-branes in the study of non-perturbative string theory was first realised. But since their discovery D-branes have found many applications in string theory.

A particularly important property of D-branes is as follows. The $`(p+1)`$ dimensional effective field theory, describing the dynamics of $`N`$ coincident D-$`p`$-branes at low energy, is a supersymmetric U(N) gauge theory with 16 supercharges. This is an ordinary gauge theory with a set of Majorana fermions and scalars in the adjoint representation of the gauge group, with the Yukawa and scalar self-couplings determined in terms of the gauge coupling via specific relations. We shall encounter the (3+1)-dimensional version of this theory again later while discussing the Maldacena conjecture.

### 2.3 Black Hole Entropy and Hawking Radiation

Black holes are classical solutions of general relativity. They can be formed from collapse of matter under gravitational pull. Classically a black hole is completely black, i.e. it absorbs everything that falls in without emitting anything. But this picture changes significantly in the quantum theory. It turns out that in the quantum theory, black holes behave as perfect black bodies at finite temperature proportional to the inverse mass of the black hole. In particular,

* black holes emit thermal radiation known as Hawking radiation, and
* a black hole carries an entropy proportional to its surface area, known as the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy.

These results were derived using a semi-classical analysis, but there was no microscopic (statistical) understanding of this entropy and radiation in this semi-classical treatment. In particular, the expressions for the entropy and the Hawking temperature were given in terms of classical geometrical properties of the space-time around the black hole. It was as if we had themodynamics without statistical mechanics. This led Hawking to suggest that starting with a collapsing spherical shell of matter in a pure quantum state, and letting it collapse into a black hole and subsequently evaporate via Hawking radiation, we can have a pure quantum state get transformed to a mixed state described by a thermal density matrix. Such a process violates the laws of quantum mechanics.

It turns out that in string theory, for a special class of black holes, one can find dual descriptions as:

* a classical solution of the equations of motion, and
* a configuration of D-branes.

Thus for these black holes we can compute entropy and Hawking radiation in two ways:

* Use Bekenstein and Hawking’s formulæ to compute the entropy and the rate of radiation from the classical solution.
* Use the quantum string theory living on the D-brane to compute the number of quantum states $`N`$ and the rate of radiation from the system. From this we can compute the entropy by taking the logarithm of the degeneracy $`N`$.

These two computations give identical result.222The two computations are valid in different regions of the parameter space, and we need to continue the result computed in one region to the other region by invoking supersymmetric non-renormalization theorems. Thus this analysis provides a microscopic explanation of the black hole entropy and Hawking radiation for these special class of black holes. It remains to be seen whether these results generalize to the more general black holes.

## 3 String Theory: 1997-2000

The developments in string theory during this period can be described as study of various aspects of $`U`$-theory. I shall discuss some of them here.

### 3.1 Matrix Theory

Note that one corner of the parameter space of $`U`$-theory is $`M`$-theory. $`M`$-theory is known to reduce to 11-dimensional supergravity theory at low energy. But there is no known systematic procedure for computing corrections to this low energy approximation. Matrix theory is a proposal for defining $`M`$-theory beyond this low energy approximation. Although I shall not describe the logic which led to the formulation of Matrix-theory, let me just state that this proposal comes from examining the dynamics of D0-branes in IIA in the appropriate limit in which it approaches the $`M`$-theory corner.

The Matrix theory proposal is as follows. Consider a scattering process in $`M`$-theory: $`A+BC+D+\mathrm{}`$ for a set of external states $`A`$, $`B`$, $`C`$, $`D`$, $`\mathrm{}`$. Let us go to a frame in which the centre of mass has an infinite boost. This is known as the infinite momentum frame. According to Matrix theory, $`M`$-theory in the infinite momentum frame is equivalent to a quantum mechanical system. The dynamical variables in this quantum mechanical system are $`N\times N`$ matrices where $`N`$ is proportional to the total momentum of the original system. Since in the infinite momentum frame the total momentum of any system is infinite, we need to take the $`N\mathrm{}`$ limit at the end.

This, in principle, gives an algorithm for computing any physical quantity in $`M`$-theory by mapping it to an appropriate quantity in this quantum mechanical system. We can perform various consistency checks. In particular at low energy, scattering amplitudes computed using matrix quantum mechanics must agree with those computed from 11-dimensional supergravity. Matrix theory has passed many such tests. Of course, in principle one should be able to use matrix theory to go beyond tree level supergravity. This has not been achieved so far.

### 3.2 Maldacena Conjecture

The starting point here is the study of $`N`$ coincident D3-branes in type IIB string theory in the large $`N`$ limit. In this limit the system has dual descriptions

* as a solution of the classical equations of motion of string theory / supergravity, and
* as a D-brane system.

Requiring that these two descriptions are equivalent led Maldacena to the following conjecture: Type IIB string theory on $`(AdS)_5\times S^5`$ is equivalent to $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory in (3+1) dimensions.

There are several terms in the above statement which may not be familiar, so I shall now define them. $`S^5`$ is an ordinary five dimensional sphere of radius $`R`$ defined by the equation

$$\underset{i=1}{\overset{6}{}}(y_i)^2=R^2,$$
(3.1)
where $`y_i`$ are the coordinates of a six dimensional Euclidean space. $`(AdS)_5`$ is the five dimensional anti-de Sitter space described by the equation

$$(x_0)^2+(x_1)^2(x_2)^2(x_3)^2(x_4)^2(x_5)^2=R^2,$$
(3.2)
where $`x_i`$’s describe a six dimensional space with metric

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`(dx_0)^2(dx_1)^2+(dx_2)^2+(dx_3)^2`$ (3.3)
$`+(dx_4)^2+(dx_5)^2.`$
It turns out that the boundary of $`(AdS)_5`$ is a (3+1) dimensional Minkowski space. Often in order to make precise statements one needs to Wick rotate to the Euclidean version of $`AdS_5`$. This is obtained by changing the signs of the $`(x_1)^2`$ term in eq.(3.2) and the $`(dx_1)^2`$ term in eq.(3.3). Its boundary is a four dimensional Euclidean space.

Finally we need to define $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory. This is an ordinary SU(N) gauge theory with 6 scalars and 4 Majorana fermions in the adjoint representation of the gauge group, with specific relations between the gauge coupling constant and various Yukawa and scalar self-couplings. In particular all the Yukawa and scalar self-couplings are determined in terms of the gauge coupling. This theory turns out to be a conformally invariant (3+1) dimensional field theory, i.e. the $`\beta `$-functions in this theory vanish.

According to the Maldacena conjecture, the relation between the dimensionless parameters of IIB string theory on $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ and supersymmetric $`SU(N)`$ Yang-Mills theory is as follows:

$$g_{string}=g_{YM}^2,R=(4\pi g_{YM}^2N)^{1/4},$$
(3.4)
where $`g_{YM}`$ and $`g_{string}`$ denote the coupling constants of the $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and the type IIB string theory respectively, $`R`$ is the radius of $`S^5`$ and $`AdS_5`$ as introduced through eqs.(3.1) and (3.2), and $`N`$ is the $`N`$ of $`SU(N)`$.

We are now in a position to state the precise form of the Maldacena conjecture: There is a one to one correspondence between the physical Greens functions in type IIB string theory on $`(AdS_5\times S^5)`$ and the correlation functions of gauge invariant operators in $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory on the boundary of $`(AdS)_5`$, with the identification of the parameters as given in eq.(3.4).

Consider now the ’t Hooft large $`N`$ limit:

$$g_{YM}0,N\mathrm{},\lambda g_{YM}^2N\mathrm{fixed}.$$
(3.5)
This gives, using eq.(3.4)

$$g_{string}0,R=(4\pi \lambda )^{1/4}\mathrm{fixed}.$$
(3.6)
Thus if $`\lambda `$ is large then $`R`$ is large. In this limit the smallness of $`g_{string}`$ implies that we can ignore the string loop corrections, i.e. restrict ourselves to string tree diagrams or classical string theory. The largeness of $`R`$ on the other hand allows us to use the low energy approximation to string theory, which is type IIB supergravity theory. Thus in this case, quantum string theory can be approximated by classical supergravity.

Many other examples of this kind of relationship have been found by studying other brane systems. The generic form that such a relation takes is that a string theory / $`M`$-theory on a manifold $`K`$ is equivalent to a quantum field theory on the boundary of $`K`$. The precise form of this quantum field theory depends on the choice of $`K`$ and the particular string theory / $`M`$-theory that we are using.

There have been various applications of Maldacena conjecture, both for using supergravity / string theory to study strong coupling limit of gauge theories, and using gauge theory to study non-perturbative aspects of string theory. Here I shall discuss one application of each kind. It had been conjectured earlier that in a consistent quantum theory of gravity, the fundamental degrees of freedom reside at the boundary of space-time and not in the interior. Furthermore, there is $`1`$ degree of freedom per Planck ‘area’.333Note that if the boundary is an $`n`$-dimensional space, then the area refers to the $`n`$-volume of this space. This principle is known as the holographic principle. Maldacena conjecture provides a concrete verification of the holographic principle for type IIB string theory on $`(AdS)_5\times S^5`$ by relating string theory on $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ to a gauge theory living on its boundary. In the $`𝒩=4`$ supersymmetric gauge theory described earlier, it is straightforward to count the total number of degrees of freedom after a suitable ultra-violet regularisation of the gauge theory. It turns out that this ultra-violet cut-off is related to the infrared cut-off of the string theory on $`AdS_5\times S^5`$, so that with this cut-off in place, the boundary of $`AdS_5`$ at a given instant of time, instead of having infinite volume like an ordinary 3 dimensional space, has finite volume. Taking the ratio of the number of degrees of freedom of the gauge theory and the volume of this 3-dimensional space, we find that the cut-off dependence goes away, and there is indeed one (up to a numerical factor) degree of freedom per Planck volume living on the boundary of $`AdS_5`$.

Another application of the Maldacena conjecture has been in the study of renormalization group (RG) flows in conformal field theories. For example, we can perturb the $`𝒩=4`$ superconformal field theory by adding some relevant perturbation. The resulting theory either

* flows to a conformal field theory, or
* flows to a theory with a mass gap (e.g. a confining theory).

On the supergravity side this perturbed theory should be described by a solution which in some region of space-time (UV) looks like $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ background, but in another region (IR) differs from the $`AdS_5\times S^5`$ geometry and represents the infra-red theory. The situation has been illustrated in Fig.6. Thus the RG evolution parameter becomes a coordinate in space time. For all RG flows which can be described via the supergravity configurations of this type, the $`c`$-theorem (which states that the central charge of a conformal field theory decreases along the RG flow) follows naturally from general properties of the supergravity equations of motion. This procedure has also been used to describe RG flow to theories with mass gap and confinement, where in the infrared the theory does not flow to a conformal field theory. In these cases space-time at the far left end (representing infrared direction in RG flow) has a more complicated structure.

### 3.3 D-branes and Non-commutative Field Theories

The dynamics of a D-$`p`$-brane is described by an open string theory, which could be regarded as a $`(p+1)`$-dimensional field theory with infinite number of fields. In the low energy limit only a finite number of massless fields survive whose dynamics is described by a $`(p+1)`$-dimensional effective quantum field theory. One of these fields is a U(1) gauge field. We can study this $`(p+1)`$-dimensional field theory in the presence of constant background electric / magnetic field associated to this U(1) gauge field. It turns out that if we switch on a constant background magnetic field, and take a suitable limit involving the string tension, the string coupling constant, the background metric and the background magnetic field, then the dynamics of the D-brane in this limit is described by a non-commutative gauge theory. The action for this non-commutative gauge theory is obtained by starting with the original low energy effective action that we had for zero magnetic field background, and then replacing all products of fields in the original action by the non-commutative product:

$`A(x)B(x)`$ $``$ $`A(x)B(x)`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{\Theta }^{\mu \nu }_\mu _\nu ^{})A(x)B(x^{})|_{x=x^{}},`$
where $`\mathrm{\Theta }^{\mu \nu }`$ is an anti-symmetric matrix determined in terms of the strength of the background magnetic field and other parameters. Thus one can use non-commutative field theory results to study D-branes in the presence of background magnetic field and vice-versa.

One of the important results coming out of these studies is that the infrared and ultraviolet effects do not decouple in a non-commutative field theory. Thus physics at large distance can affect physics at short distance and vice versa. There have been suggestions that this is also a general property of string theory. Another important result is the discovery that non-commutative scalar field theories can contain stable soliton solutions even if their commutative counterparts do not contain such solutions due to Derrick’s theorem.

### 3.4 Tachyon Condensation on Brane-Antibrane System

As has been discussed earlier, type IIB string theory has stable D$`p`$-branes for odd $`p`$. In particular, $`p=9`$ describes a space-filling 9-brane. This theory also has stable D$`\overline{p}`$-branes for odd $`p`$. These are D$`p`$-branes with opposite orientation. It turns out that although D$`p`$-branes and D$`\overline{p}`$-branes are individually stable, a system of coincident D$`p`$-brane D$`\overline{p}`$-brane has tachyonic modes. These are scalar fields $`T`$ with negative mass2. Thus such a system is classically unstable.

The question that arises naturally is: Is there a stable minimum of the classical tachyon potential $`V(T)`$? The conjectured answer to this question is as follows:

1. The minimum of $`V(T)`$, $`T=T_0`$, describes ‘nothing’ where the original energy of the brane-antibrane system is exactly cancelled by $`V(T_0)`$
2. There are no perturbative open string excitations around this vacuum, but there are solitons. These solitons describe lower dimensional D-branes.

Evidence for these conjectures come from various sources (string field theory, conformal field theory, non-commutative field theory, Maldacena conjecture, Matrix theory etc.) There are several applications of these results:

* Describing all D-branes as solitons on space-filling branes gives a way to classify all possible D-brane configurations in a string theory in terms of K-theory.
* These results suggest that the open string theory on the space-filling brane anti-brane system may provide a non-perturbative formulation of string theory, since

+ it naturally contains all D-branes as solitons, and
    + there is also evidence that this theory contains closed string states.

From this viewpoint, the fundamental degrees of freedom are open strings, and closed strings (including gravitons) and D-branes are composite objects.

### 3.5 Special Limits of String Theory: String Theories without Gravity

If we have a $`p`$-brane soliton, then the degrees of freedom on the soliton describe a quantum theory living in $`(p+1)`$ dimensions. Typically these degrees of freedom interact with those living in the bulk, and we do not have a consistent quantum theory involving only the degrees of freedom living on the $`p`$-brane. But in certain special limits, the degrees of freedom in the bulk may decouple. In that case, we get a consistent $`(p+1)`$-dimensional quantum theory on the $`p`$-brane world-volume without gravity since gravity lives in the bulk. One such limit is the low energy limit in which we recover a quantum field theory living on the $`p`$-brane world-volume. As discussed in subsection 3.3, a variation of this limit can also give rise to non-commutative field theories. But there are other limits which give us full fledged string theory (or other quantum theories which cannot be described as quantum field theories) in $`(p+1)`$-dimensions without gravity. These theories are expected to capture many of the important features of standard string theories, without being plagued by the conceptual problems which arise due to the presence of gravity. I shall give a few examples here.

* LST (Little string theories): Besides containing the D-brane solitons, string theories also contain another kind of 5-brane soliton, known as the NS 5-brane. In the presence of a set of coincident NS 5-branes, we have a set of degrees of freedom localised on the 5-branes, describing the dynamics of these NS 5-branes, and another set of degrees of freedom living in the (9+1) dimensional bulk space-time. It turns out that in the limit of vanishing string coupling constant with the string tension remaining finite, the degrees of freedom living on the NS 5-branes decouple from the degrees of freedom living in the bulk, and hence we get a consistent (5+1) dimensional string theory without gravity. This theory and its various cousins obtained via compactification are known as little string theories.
* NCOS (Non-commutative open string) theory: In this case the starting point is a D-$`p`$-brane in the presence of a non-zero constant electric field background. By taking an appropriate limit involving the string coupling constant, the string tension, the background metric and the electric field strength on the D-$`p`$-brane one can decouple the bulk modes from the modes living on the D-$`p`$-brane. The $`(p+1)`$ dimensional theory obtained this way has been called non-commutative open string theories, since the fundamental degrees of freedom in this theory are open strings, but the action involving these open strings is related to the action of the usual open string theory by a replacement of all ordinary products by appropriate non-commutative products.
* OM (open membrane) theory: Like string theory, $`M`$-theory also has solitonic branes. In particular, it has a 5-brane and a 2-brane soliton solutions. Among the degrees of freedom living on the 5-brane world-volume, there is a rank 2 anti-symmetric tensor gauge field. Its field strength is a totally anti-symmetric self-dual rank 3 tensor in (5+1) dimensions. It turns out that starting from a configuration with constant non-vanishing field strength of this anti-symmetric tensor field, and taking an appropriate limit involving the Planck mass, the background metric and this field strength, one can decouple the bulk modes from the brane modes. The resulting (5+1) dimensional quantum theory living on the 5-brane has been called the open membrane theory. As the name suggests, excitations in this theory include open membranes with their boundaries stuck to the 5-brane.
* OD$`p`$ (Open D$`p`$-brane) theories: As in the case of little string theories, here the starting point is an NS 5-brane of type IIA string theory. But instead of putting it in trivial background space-time, we now switch on constant background values of some appropriate bulk fields (known as Ramond-Ramond (RR) gauge fields). By taking appropriate limits of the string tension, the string coupling constant, the background metric and the background value of the RR gauge fields, one can again decouple the theory in the bulk from the theory on the brane. The result is a quantum theory on the 5-brane, known as open D-$`p`$-brane theories. The name originates from the fact that the excitations on the brane include open D-$`p`$-branes (the value of $`p`$ depends on which particular RR gauge field is switched on) with their boundaries stuck on the 5-brane.

### 3.6 Large Radius Compactification

In conventional compactification of string theory leading to semi-realistic models, both gravity and gauge fields come from the closed string sector. In this scheme, a direct upper bound on the size of the compact dimension comes from experimental verification of various force laws to small distance scales. Thus, for example, test of QED down to a distance scale of $`(TeV)^1`$ will mean that the size of the compact direction cannot be larger than $`(TeV)^1`$. Otherwise we would have to use higher dimensional QED for our computation.

Discovery that gauge fields can live on D-branes has given rise to new possibilities. Consider for example the scenario shown in Fig.7 where 6 of the directions are compactified on a manifold $`K`$, and there is a set of three branes with their world-volume directed along the non-compact directions, situated at a given point in the compact space. All gauge fields and known matter fields come from the world-volume theory on the three brane, and gravity comes from the closed strings living in the bulk. Thus here gauge fields are always (3+1) dimensional, irrespective of the size of the compact dimensions. In this scenario, the only direct upper bound on the size of the compact dimension comes from the test of inverse square law for gravity at short distance scale. This gives an upper bound of about a millimetre on the size of the compact dimensions. There are of course other indirect bounds which we shall not discuss here, but the fact remains that the size of these extra compact dimensions can be much larger than $`(TeV)^1`$, $``$ the distance scale probed in the present accelerator experiments.

Presence of large extra dimensions also changes the relation between four dimensional Planck scale and string scale. The new relation is of the form:

$$M_{Planck}M_{string}\sqrt{M_{string}^6V_{compact}},$$
(3.8)
where $`M_{Planck}`$ denotes the four dimensional Planck mass, $`M_{string}`$ denotes the square root of the string tension, and $`V_{compact}`$ denotes the volume of the compact six dimensional manifold. (We have taken the string coupling to be of order 1). From this relation we see that if the size of the compact direction is much larger than the string scale, i.e. if $`M_{string}(V_{compact})^{1/6}>>1`$, then $`M_{string}<<M_{Planck}`$. It has even been suggested that $`M_{string}`$ can be of the order of a TeV; this requires $`M_{string}(V_{compact})^{1/6}`$ to be of order $`10^510^6`$. This would resolve the usual hierarchy problem as to why $`M_{string}`$ is so large compared to the mass scale of weak interaction $``$ in this scheme they are of the same order. However, it gives rise to a new hierarchy problem, $``$ that of explaining why $`M_{string}(V_{compact})^{1/6}`$ is so large. Various ideas have been put forth, but there is no definite conclusion.

A twist to this tale is provided by the Randall-Sundrum scenario for string compactification illustrated in Fig.8. In this scenario, the graviton that we observe in four dimension is not the usual ten dimensional bulk graviton carrying zero momentum in the compact direction, but a particular mode of the ten dimensional graviton which is localised on a brane. This brane however is not the brane that we live on, but another brane (which we shall call the gravity brane), separated from us by a fairly large distance along the compact direction. Since the wave-function of the graviton falls off exponentially away from the gravity 3-brane. it has a very small value on the matter 3-brane. This fact can be used to explain why gravity couples so weakly to matter, i.e. why the effective Planck mass in our (3+1) dimensional world is so large. The advantage of the scenario is that due to the exponential fall off of the graviton wave-function away from the gravity brane, one can generate a large hierarchy between the effective four dimensional Planck scale and the weak scale without having to make the actual separation between the gravity brane and our brane very large.

## 4 Summary

I shall end by summarising the main points once more.

* String theory has had reasonable success in providing a consistent quantum theory of gravity. This includes:

1. Finiteness of perturbation theory
    2. Partial resolution of the problems associated with quantum mechanics of black holes
    3. Explicit realization of holographic principle in certain backgrounds
* String theory also has the potential for providing a unified theory of all interactions. In particular, it can give rise to

1. Gauge group containing $`SU(3)\times SU(2)\times U(1)`$
    2. Chiral fermions
    3. Three generations of quarks and leptons
    4. N=1 supersymmetry
* It has also proved to be an internally consistent and beautiful theory. In particular, string duality provides

1. Unification of all string theories.
    2. Democracy between elementary and composite particles.
    3. Unification of classical and quantum effects.
* Progress in string theory has also dramatically improved our understanding of various aspects of quantum field theories and other quantum theories based on extended objects. New relationship between quantum field theories and string theories have been discovered during the past few years.
* The last few years have seen several attempts at giving a non-perturbative definition of string/M(U) theory. It is still too early to say if any of them will give rise to a fruitful approach to the study of non-perturbative effects in string theory.
* The brane world scenario has given rise to novel possibilities for string compactification.

However, despite this enormous progress, string theory is still far from achieving its final goal, which is to provide a unified theory of all matter and their interactions.

Acknowledgment: I wish to thank S. Rao for comments on the manuscript.


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# A linear radiofrequency ion trap for accumulation, bunching, and emittance improvement of radioactive ion beams

## 1 Introduction

The development of new techniques for the manipulation of radioactive ion beams is actively pursued by several groups worldwide. One of the main objectives is a better matching of the properties of the radioactive ion beams to the specific requirements of the experiments. Here ion trap techniques have started to play an increasingly important role, in particular for the accumulation, cooling, and bunching of these beams. Both, Penning traps  and radiofrequency multipole ion traps or guides  can fulfill this task. In addition, Penning traps offer high-resolution mass separation and can be used for beam purification . Radiofrequency multipole ion guides have been employed in ion chemistry and molecular physics for many years . Now they have gained increasing importance in the field of nuclear physics, where they are used for guiding charged nuclear reaction products from high-pressure gas cells into high-vacuum regions in order to form low-energy radioactive ion beams  or for enabling ultra-sensitive laser experiments on radioactive ions .

A rather new application is the use of radiofrequency multipole systems for the manipulation and improvement of radioactive ion beams as they are available from on-line mass separators. At the ISOLDE facility  at CERN, a beam accumulator, cooler, buncher, and emittance improver based on a linear radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) ion trap has been realized and used for on-line physics experiments. The system is installed at the Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP . Its task is the conversion of the continuous 60-keV ISOLDE ion beam into low-energy, low-emittance ion bunches that can be transferred with high efficiency into the mass spectrometer.

## 2 The ISOLTRAP facility

Figure 1 shows an overview of the layout of the ISOLTRAP Penning trap mass spectrometer together with the radiofrequency quadrupole ion beam buncher. The ISOLTRAP spectrometer itself consists of two Penning traps and has been described in detail in earlier publications . Here only a short description of the tasks of the Penning traps and of the basic operation will be given.

Low-energy ion pulses delivered by the RFQ ion beam buncher are captured in the first Penning trap. The main task of this trap is the purification of the ion bunch from contaminating ions. A mass selective buffer gas cooling technique  is employed, which is based on the simultaneous application of a buffer gas and an RF excitation of the motion of the stored ions. This technique allows operation of the trap as an isobar separator with a resolving power of up to $`R10^5`$ for ions with mass number $`A100`$ .

The second trap is a high-precision trap  used for the mass measurement of the ions delivered by the first Penning trap. The mass measurement is carried out via a determination of the cyclotron frequency $`\omega _\mathrm{c}=\frac{q}{m}B`$ of an ion with mass $`m`$ and charge $`q`$ in a magnetic field of known strength $`B`$. Using this technique, to date more than 150 isotopes have been investigated with a mass accuracy of $`\delta m/m110^7`$ (see for example ).

For the ISOLTRAP experiment (and any other ion trap experiment connected to an on-line mass separator), the most critical issue is the efficient transfer of the radioactive ion beam, which is typically of a few tens of keV in energy, into the ion trap. In an earlier version of ISOLTRAP, a stopping–reionization scheme was used in order to obtain a low-energy beam of radioactive ions. This approach limited the applicability of the Penning trap mass spectrometry to those elements that can be efficiently surface-ionized. Already several years ago, a development of an ion beam accumulator based on a Paul trap system was started. Such a system  was indeed realized and has been used successfully at the ISOLTRAP experiment . However, it was found that the acceptance of the Paul trap system was not well matched to the ISOLDE beam emittance and that the ejection of the ions out of the system was very critical. The linear ion trap system to be discussed in this paper follows the same concept as the earlier Paul trap system, but avoids these difficulties.

## 3 Principle of the ISOLTRAP ion beam cooler and buncher

The principle of the ISOLTRAP ion beam cooler and buncher is illustrated in Fig. 2. The 60-keV ISOLDE ion beam is electrostatically retarded to an energy of a few eV and injected into a linear radiofrequency quadrupole ion trap, which is filled with a buffer gas. The trap system consists of four segmented rods to which radiofrequency voltages are applied so as to obtain a transversely focusing force. The segmentation of the rods allows the creation of a DC electric field along the axis of the system. Ions entering the linear trap will lose transverse and longitudinal energy due to collisions with the buffer gas. They are finally accumulated in the potential well at the end of the system forming an ion bunch. By switching the potential of the last rod segments, as indicated in the figure, the ion bunch can be extracted. For a discussion of the principle of similar devices used as an ion guide see .

### 3.1 Linear radiofrequency quadrupole ion traps

The confinement of an ion in a linear RFQ trap as presented here is achieved by combining a static trapping potential $`V_{\mathrm{DC}}`$ along the axis of the system with a radial confinement. The latter results from the interaction of the trapped ion with a radiofrequency quadrupole field generated by the RF voltages applied to the quadrupole rods of the system.

The radial confinement in an exactly quadrupolar field can be described in terms of Mathieu equations , which also define the stability criteria of the motion. It is useful to consider the resulting motion as being that of a particle in a pseudopotential well  of depth $`V_{\mathrm{RF}}`$. While the electric field configuration of the linear trap produces motions that cannot be exactly described in terms of the Mathieu functions (due to the strong radial and azimuthal dependence of the axial field), it is still useful to consider the first-order solution of the motion as a linear superposition of the DC axial field potential and the RF quadrupole pseudopotential.

The pseudopotential is generated by radiofrequency voltages with amplitudes $`\pm U_{\mathrm{RF}}`$ and angular frequency $`\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}`$. As shown in Fig. 2, these voltages are applied with 180 phase difference to pairwise connected opposite elements of a quadrupole rod system. The separation between the surfaces of opposite electrodes is $`2r_0`$. The resulting pseudopotential is given by

$$V_{\mathrm{RF}}(r)=\frac{qU_{\mathrm{RF}}}{4r_0^2}r^2$$
(1)
where

$$q=4\frac{eU_{\mathrm{RF}}}{mr_0^2\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}^2}$$
(2)
is the relevant Mathieu parameter and $`e`$ and $`m`$ are the charge and mass of the stored ion. The solution of the Mathieu equation shows that the motion is stable as long as $`q<0.908`$. In the radiofrequency field, the ion performs a micro-motion at the frequency $`\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}`$ of the field and a macro-motion that can be understood as an oscillation in the pseudopotential $`V_{\mathrm{RF}}`$. To a good approximation for $`q<0.6`$, its oscillation frequency is

$$\omega _\mathrm{m}=\frac{q}{\sqrt{8}}\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}.$$
(3)
As an example, a singly charged ion with mass number $`A=39`$ in a four-rod structure with $`r_0=6`$ mm operated with $`\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}=2\pi 1`$ MHz, $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}=80`$ V will experience a depth of the radial trapping potential of about $`11`$ V in which it oscillates with $`\omega _\mathrm{m}=196`$ kHz.

As illustrated in Fig. 2, the axial confinement is provided by applying DC voltages to the different segments of the rods in order to create a potential well along the trap axis. The minimum of the potential curve can be approximated by a parabola $`V_{\mathrm{DC}}(r=0,z)=(U_{\mathrm{DC}}/z_0^2)z^2`$ defined by the characteristic length $`z_0`$ and voltage $`U_{\mathrm{DC}}`$. Since $`V_{\mathrm{DC}}(r,z)=0`$, the corresponding axisymmetric quadrupole potential is

$$V_{\mathrm{DC}}(r,z)=\frac{U_{\mathrm{DC}}}{z_0^2}\left(z^2\frac{r^2}{2}\right).$$
(4)
In the region where the DC potential along the trap axis has its minimum, the radial confinement due to the radiofrequency field is counteracted by the repelling radial part of the DC potential. The overall potential in the trap minimum then becomes

$$\overline{V}(r,z)=\frac{U_{\mathrm{DC}}}{z_0^2}z^2+\left(\frac{q}{4}\frac{U_{\mathrm{RF}}}{r_0^2}\frac{U_{\mathrm{DC}}}{2z_0^2}\right)r^2.$$
(5)
With the parameters used above and $`U_{\mathrm{DC}}/z_0^2=10`$V/cm2, the radial trapping potential well is reduced by about 1.8 V compared to the RF-only case. From Eq. 5 the condition

$$U_{\mathrm{RF},\mathrm{min}}=r_0^2\omega _{\mathrm{RF}}\sqrt{\frac{m}{e}\frac{U_{\mathrm{DC}}}{2z_0^2}}$$
(6)
can be derived for the minimum RF voltage required for three-dimensional ion trapping.

### 3.2 Buffer gas cooling

After the ions have entered the linear radiofrequency quadrupole, they interact with the buffer gas. The ions are elastically scattered at the buffer-gas atoms transferring part of their energy to them. Thus, the motion of the ions is damped until they finally come into thermal equilibrium with the buffer gas in the minimum of the trapping potential.

To study the overall cooling process, it is sufficient to describe the action of the gas as that of a viscous force. However, for an understanding of ion loss mechanisms and final ion temperatures, a microscopic modelling of the deceleration and cooling process including the radiofrequency field is required. Various calculations of both kinds have been carried out for the system presented here. In the following the most basic aspects of buffer gas cooling in such a system will be discussed.

For low ion energies (less than a few eV), the damping of the ion motion is dominated by the long-range interaction of the ion with buffer gas atoms, polarized by this ion. This interaction results in an average damping force

$$\stackrel{}{F}=\delta m\stackrel{}{v},$$
(7)
where $`m`$ and $`v`$ are the mass and the velocity of the ion. The damping coefficient

$$\delta =\frac{e}{m}\frac{1}{\mu }\frac{p/p_\mathrm{N}}{T/T_\mathrm{N}}$$
(8)
is proportional to the gas pressure $`p`$ (in fractions of the normal pressure $`p_\mathrm{N}`$) and inversely proportional to the temperature $`T`$ (in fractions of the normal temperature $`T_\mathrm{N}`$) and the reduced ion mobility $`\mu `$ , which for low kinetic energies of the ions is constant for a given ion species and type of buffer gas. For kinetic energies $`>1`$ eV the ion mobility decreases (see discussion in ). For the purpose of this paper it is sufficient to take the constant low-energy values as an upper limit for the ion mobility.

Figure 3 illustrates the cooling and accumulation process in a linear trap with an axial potential as shown in Fig. 2. The simulation has been performed for a 39K+ ion entering the system with an initial kinetic energy of $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}=10`$ eV. The axial potential well depth is $`V_{\mathrm{z0}}=50`$ V and the trap has a total length of $`L=1`$ m with the potential minimum at $`l_0=0.8`$ m. A helium buffer gas pressure of $`p_{\mathrm{He}}=10^2`$ mbar has been used. With an ion mobility $`\mu (\mathrm{K}^+\mathrm{He})=2.1510^3`$ m2/Vs, the damping constant reaches a value of $`\delta =11500`$ s-1. As can be seen in Fig. 3(a) and (b), both the axial and the radial oscillation amplitude of the ion are damped very quickly. Even more illustrative is Fig. 3(c) which shows the total energy of the ion as a function of the axial position. Already during its first oscillation in the system the ion loses more than 50 % of its initial total energy. The equilibrium with the buffer-gas temperature is reached within about 1 ms.

The viscous damping approach presented above is valid at low velocity for ions with masses much heavier than the mass of the buffer gas atoms. Figure 4 illustrates the limits of this approach. A comparison of the ion motion in the first (linear potential) part of the quadrupole system is shown, as calculated under the assumption of viscous damping and in a full Monte-Carlo calculation. In this calculation the trajectories of several thousand ions have been investigated using realistic interaction potentials for the collision of the ions with the buffer-gas atoms (details of this microscopic calculation will be discussed in an upcoming publication ). In the case of Cs ions in He, the validity of the viscous damping description is nicely confirmed, and even for Cs+ in Ar, good agreement is obtained in the time average. However, in the case of K+ in Kr, the motion becomes unstable very quickly and the ion is radially ejected out of the system. The reason is that the micro-motion of an ion colliding with a heavier atom can make a phase jump with respect to the radiofrequency which leads to an increase of the kinetic energy. This process is called RF-heating. In the case of light ions and a heavy gas, it is the predominant cause of ion loss from RFQ traps.

In order to determine the properties of ion bunches extracted from the trap, the final spatial distribution of the trapped and cooled ions is of interest. As a first approach we take the form of the overall potential in the trap center from Eq. 5 and the parameters as used above and assume that the ions reach a final temperature $`T=300`$ K equal to that of the buffer gas. Assuming Boltzmann distributions, we obtain axial and transverse distributions as shown as solid curves in Fig. 5 for Cs+ ions. The points are the result of a microscopic calculation. It can be seen that the oscillating electrical field and the collisions with the gas have only a very small effect on the ion distribution for Cs+ in Ar but a significant one for Cs+ in Xe. Practically no effect is seen for Cs+ in He, not shown in the figure here.

### 3.3 Ion injection and extraction

#### 3.3.1 Deceleration and injection

In order to stop an energetic ion beam in the linear ion trap by gas collisions, first the beam has to be decelerated to low energies (in the order of 10 eV). This can be accomplished by placing the whole ion trap on a potential slightly below the corresponding ion beam energy. With reduction of energy the divergence of the beam increases. Therefore, it depends on the original emittance of the ion beam how far the energy of the beam can be reduced by electrostatic means. For example, an ion beam of $`E_0=60`$ keV with an emittance of $`ϵ=35\pi `$ mm mrad that is decelerated to $`E_1=20`$ eV and focused to fit through a 5-mm-diameter opening has a maximum divergence of $`\theta 45^o`$ and a maximum transverse energy of about 10 eV. Whether such a beam can be injected into a linear trap without losses depends on the acceptance of the system. The latter is determined by the transverse dimensions and the transverse focusing force inside the trap.

For the ion beam buncher discussed here, a number of injection calculations have been performed in order to determine the acceptance of the system. As an example, Fig. 6 shows a comparison of the transverse acceptance of the ISOLTRAP ion beam buncher and the transverse emittance of the ISOLDE ion beam, both at beam energies of 30 keV. The diagrams are calculated at a position 140 mm upstream from the 6-mm hole of the retardation electrode.

The emittance diagram was obtained from beam transport calculations (GIOSP ) of the ISOLDE beam from the ion source to the apparatus. The focusing parameters of ISOLDE beam line elements were varied until maximum overlap with the buncher acceptance was obtained. For the acceptance diagram, a Monte-Carlo simulation for the ion injection into the buncher was performed (for the RFQ parameters see Table 2). An ion was considered to be confined when it passed the first 200 mm of the quadrupole rod system without hitting an electrode. The calculation was repeated for various phases of the radiofrequency field. For each $`x`$ and $`\alpha `$ value an average of the result was taken including the beam dimensions $`x`$ and $`\beta `$. The result is the acceptance diagram shown in Fig. 6(b). From this acceptance and the ISOLDE beam emittance a value of $`ϵ_{\mathrm{calc}}35`$ % is obtained for the theoretical capture efficiency.

#### 3.3.2 Extraction and acceleration

When the ions have been accumulated in the trap potential minimum, they can be extracted by switching the potential as indicated in Fig. 2. With appropriate voltages applied to the electrodes, ion pulses not longer than a few micro seconds can be generated. The beam properties of the extracted ion pulses depend on the temperature and spatial distribution of the ion cloud. The time structure depends in addition on the shape of the potential used to extract the ions. If no further measures are taken, the ion pulse leaving the trap at the potential of the HV platform will be accelerated towards ground potential and once again reach the energy of the injected ion beam. For the transfer into the ISOLTRAP Penning traps, low-energy ($`2.5keV`$) ion pulses are required.

An elegant way to modify the potential energy of an ion pulse is to have the ions enter a pulsed cavity. The principle is illustrated in Fig. 7. After having left the linear ion trap at a potential $`U_{\mathrm{HV}}`$ the ion pulse is accelerated towards a cavity at a potential $`U_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$ to gain a kinetic energy $`E_{\mathrm{kin}}=e(U_{\mathrm{HV}}U_{\mathrm{cavity}})`$. When the ion pulse reaches the field-free region inside the cavity, the latter is switched to ground potential and the ions leave it without any further change of their kinetic energy.

## 4 The experimental setup

Figure 8 shows the setup of the ISOLTRAP ion beam cooler and buncher. On one side the system is connected to the ISOLDE beam line system and on the other side to the ion beam transport system of ISOLTRAP. A 60-keV test ion source and a beam switchyard (not shown in the figure) are installed upstream in the ISOLDE beam line in order to allow test measurements without the ISOLDE ion beam. Beam intensities and profiles can be measured with a needle beam scanner and a Faraday cup in front of the ion beam buncher. Most of the relevant parts of the cooler and buncher, including the electronics and the gas inlet system, are placed on a 60-kV high-voltage platform in a high-voltage cage. Ceramic insulators separate the vacuum system on the HV platform from the beam lines on ground potential. Efficient pumping is achieved by turbo-molecular pumps at ground potential placed close to the insulators.

The ion-optical elements of the cooler and buncher can be grouped into three functional sections. In the first section the deceleration of the ISOLDE ion beam takes place, the second section is the linear ion trap, and in the third section the extracted ion bunches are accelerated to the desired transport energy. All electrodes are made of stainless steel. Alumina or glass ceramic (Macor) are used for insulating parts. The electrical connections to the ion-optical elements are made via UHV multi-pin feedthroughs and Kapton-insulated wires. Table 1 summarizes some important mechanical parameters of the system which will be discussed below in more detail.

### 4.1 The deceleration and injection section

Figure 9 shows the design of the deceleration electrode system and its connection to the linear ion trap system discussed below. This deceleration electrode system is the copy of a prototype described in more detail in . The ISOLDE ion beam enters through the ground electrode which is equipped with an insulated diaphragm for current measurements. The shape of the deceleration electrode is designed to focus the beam through the 6-mm opening at its end. An additional electrode and the first segments of the four-rod structure are used to obtain the final retardation and to focus the beam towards the axis of the system.

For the presented cooler and buncher ion optical simulations were performed so as to determine the optimal position of the ground electrode with respect to the deceleration electrode and to get a set of voltages that give the best injection efficiency into the trap system. These voltages were used as start values for the experimental optimization. A set of typical voltages for the deceleration section are listed in Table 2 below together with parameters for the other sections.

### 4.2 The linear ion trap

Figure 10 shows a photograph of the assembled electrode system of the linear ion trap with the deceleration electrode mounted. Figure 11 shows a detailed view of a part of a rod and how the cylindrical electrode segments are mounted together. The quadrupole rods have a total length of $`881.5`$ mm. Each rod consists of 26 segments. All electrodes have a diameter of 18 mm. They are aligned by four inner support rods with ceramic insulators in-between, separating the electrodes by 0.5 mm axially. The quadrupole rods themselves are mounted via ceramic supports to four mounting disks as shown in the lower part of the fig. 11. The inner distance between opposite quadrupole rods is $`2r_0=12`$ mm. The holding disks are kept at fixed distances by the four outer support rods. Additional ceramic rods are provided to “seal” the system. This is to maximize the gas pressure inside the trap while minimizing the pumping requirements of the whole system. Electrode segments of various lengths are used (see Table 1). The shorter segments at the entrance of the trap allow to set up an axial potential gradient for retardation and focusing of the incoming ions as discussed above. In the part of the trap where the potential decreases slowly and linearly, longer segments are sufficient. A high segmentation is again required in the region where the ions are finally accumulated and ejected.

### 4.3 The extraction section and the pulsed cavity

Figure 12 shows the extraction optics of the buncher and the pulsed cavity. The extraction hole has a diameter of 6 mm. The extraction optics consists of an einzel lens formed by a cylindrical electrode between two diaphragms and a set of x-y steerers. The purpose of this arrangement is to adapt the divergence of the extracted ion bunch to the ion optics downstream and to allow adjustments of the ion-flight direction.

At a distance of 90 mm downstream from the extraction optics, the ions enter the pulsed cavity, which is only partly shown in the figure. The cavity is designed to shield the ion pulse from external fields and has a total length of 380 mm. This is larger than the expected length of a pulse of ions with mass number $`A>20`$ that is injected into the cavity with an kinetic energy of 2 to 3 keV. In Fig. 8 it can be seen that the pulsed cavity is fixed to a support directly mounted on an insulated flange perpendicular to the beam axis.

### 4.4 Vacuum system and gas supply

Figure 13 gives a schematic overview of the vacuum and gas inlet system. The vacuum system that houses the ion-optical parts discussed above consists of several vacuum chambers mostly of CF 150 size. Two magnetic-bearing turbo-molecular pumps (Pfeiffer TMU 1000MC) with a pumping speed of 870 l/s for helium are connected on both sides of the system. These pumps are backed by one 40 m3/h roughing pump. Differential pumping is accomplished by diaphragms at the entrance and exit side in order to reduce the gas flow out of the trapping region. The trap is mainly pumped via the entrance and exit holes for the ions. The buffer-gas inlet is via a needle valve connected to a pressure controller (Balzers EVR 116 + RVC 200). Inside the vacuum chamber, a thin stainless steel tube guides the gas into the central region of the RFQ structure. A full-range pressure gauge (Balzers PKR 250) is connected to the vacuum chamber on the HV platform. Its reading is used as the input for the pressure controller. The pressure value measured with the gauge is of course lower than the pressure inside the structure. From gas flow simulations, it is expected that the gauge gives a reading which is about a factor of 10 lower than the actual pressure inside the center of the structure111In this paper, the values given for the measured pressure are the vacuum gauge readings corrected for the gas-specific factor..

A reasonable working pressure inside the RF-structure is $`p_{\mathrm{He}}10^2`$ mbar. With the resulting gas load, care has to be taken about possible discharge processes in the system. A critical point is the region where the ground injection electrode is close to the deceleration electrode (Fig. 9) with a gap of 5 mm and a potential difference of up to 60 kV. One has to make sure that at this gap a pressure regime is reached, where the discharge probability is minimized. The Paschen curve  for helium gives a maximum pressure of the order of $`10^5`$ mbar. Gas flow calculations have confirmed that such values can be reached with the applied pumping speed, the entrance and exit openings of the linear trap, the desired inside pressure, and the required gas flow. The experimentally measured pressures are given in Fig. 13.

Another point of concern are gas impurities in the system which can give rise to charge exchange and loss of ions. Such effects have been seen in the start-up of the system when ions like argon were injected into the ion beam cooler and buncher. Meanwhile, this has been cured by baking the whole system. Furthermore, pellets of non-evaporable getter material (SAES St 172 type) have been installed in the gas inlet line of the buncher for gas purification.

### 4.5 Electronics and control system

#### 4.5.1 The high-voltage system

Figure 14 shows schematically the high-voltage and the line power supply for the high-voltage platform. An oil-free 2-kW isolation transformer is used to provide line power to the platform. The platform potential is provided by a remote-controllable power supply (FUG HCN 140M-65000) with a maximum voltage of 65 kV and a short- and long-term voltage stability of $`10^5`$. This power supply is connected to the secondary windings of the transformer via a 5.6-k$`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ current-limiting resistor. Varistors across the secondary winding of the isolation transformer protect the electronic equipment on the high-voltage platform from high-voltage transients caused by occasional sparkovers.

Figure 15 shows the circuit used for the switching of the potential of the cavity. A fast high-voltage transistor switch (Behlke HTS 650) discharges the cavity with a fall-time $`t_\mathrm{f}=220`$ ns. After a constant on-time of 60 $`\mu `$s the switch opens again, allowing the cavity to be charged again to high voltage with a rise-time $`t_\mathrm{r}=22`$ ms. Due to the internal resistance of the high voltage switch, the cavity can only be discharged to ground when a negative bias voltage of several hundred volts is applied to the point marked $`U_{\mathrm{offset}}`$ (a typical value is $`500`$ V). A spark gap S serves to protect the low-voltage side of the circuit.

#### 4.5.2 Radiofrequency and DC supplies for the buncher

The RF voltage for the radial pseudopotential has to be applied to all segments of the system but with a phase shift of 180 between segments of neighboring rods. The DC potentials are applied in two different modes, depending on whether the element is used for a static potential or whether the potential is dynamically switched within less than one microsecond.

Two different types of circuits are used. The circuit shown in Fig. 16(a) is used for all elements where a static DC voltage is required. The RF voltage $`U_{\mathrm{RF},\mathrm{in}}`$ is provided by a function generator (Stanford Research DS 345) after amplification by a 200-W radiofrequency amplifier (ENI 240L) and fed into a transformer. The secondary winding has a grounded center tap in order to generate two symmetrical radiofrequency signals $`U_{\mathrm{RF}\pm }`$ of opposite sign. These RF voltages are added via capacitors $`C=10`$ nF to the DC voltages $`U_{\mathrm{DC},i}`$ ($`i=1\mathrm{}k`$) in order to obtain a combined RF/DC signal which applied to the different pairs of electrodes $`S_{i\pm }`$ ($`i=1\mathrm{}k`$). Two inductances $`L_\mathrm{b}=3.9`$ mH protect each DC feeding point from the two RF signals. The DC voltages are provided by 0 to 500-V power supply modules (Brandenburg). The voltage series required for the generation of the linear potential slope (see Fig. 2) is obtained via a resistive voltage divider chain fed by two of the DC power supply modules. The most critical electrodes closest to the injection side of the buncher and those in the trapping region have separate voltage supplies. The inductance of the transformer and the capacitances have been matched to the capacitance of the electrodes in order to obtain a maximum RF voltage at a frequency of $`\nu `$1 MHz. An amplitude $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}125`$ V is reached with about 40 W RF power.

For the extraction of the ions from the buncher it is necessary to switch the potential of the last segments of the linear trap very quickly. Therefore, the relevant segments are supplied with a circuit as shown in Fig. 16(b). The DC voltage from the DC modules is sent to the center tap of the transformer via a fast transistor switch. With this system, a fall-time of 0.5 $`\mu `$s is obtained.

A number of additional power supplies is used for the voltages of the deceleration and focusing electrode (see Fig. 9) and the extraction optics (see Fig. 12). The high voltage $`U_{\mathrm{cavity}}`$ for the pulsed cavity (see Fig. 15) is also provided from the HV platform.

#### 4.5.3 The control system

Figure 17 shows the layout of those parts of the control system relevant for the operation of the cooler and buncher. Since most of the electronics is installed on the HV platform, remote control of the system is mandatory. Three different optical links provide the communication between the VME-based computer system of the ISOLTRAP spectrometer and the electronics on the HV-platform. A GPIB link (National Instruments GPIB-140) is used to control the function generator for the radiofrequency signal and to read out a pico-amperemeter. A field bus system (Profibus) equipped with DACs and ADCs is used for analog programming and monitoring a total of 28 voltage supplies. It also serves for programming the pressure regulation system. A fast TTL link (Harting) is used to provide the trigger for the fast voltage switching required for the ion extraction from the buncher.

#### 4.5.4 Diagnostics

Several tools are available for the optimization and diagnosis of the performance of the ion beam buncher. The ISOLDE beam scanner and movable Faraday-cup in front of the buncher allow the measurement of profile and current of beams from both ISOLDE and the test ion source. In order to optimize the injection of the 60-keV ion beam into the buncher, it is important to perform a beam current measurement on the high-voltage platform. For this purpose a pico-amperemeter (Keithley 485) is installed on the platform which can be connected to any of the buncher electrodes. On the ejection side another Faraday cup and a micro-channel plate (MCP) detector are available. This detector consists of 2 MCP’s with 18 mm active area mounted in a Chevron arrangement. No electron repelling grid is used (see discussion in section 6.2). This MCP detector has been used for most of the test measurements reported below. More MCP detectors are available further downstream for the tuning of the ion beam transport to the Penning trap system. In addition, a beam viewing system is available which can be installed behind the 90 vertical deflector (see fig. 1) to obtain the spatial distribution of the ion beam. This system (Colutron BVS-2), which is mounted on a flange with a viewport, consists of an MCP with a phosphor screen behind it. The fluorescent light from the phosphor screen originated by the secondary electrons of the MCP after ion impact, can be viewed through this window with a CCD camera. When this detector is used the deflector electrode system is removed from its vacuum chamber in order to allow the ions to pass through.

## 5 Operation

Table 2 gives a typical set of operating parameters for ions with mass number close to $`A=39`$ and $`A=133`$. The ions enter the linear trap with an energy of 20 eV after retardation. The value given for the buffer gas pressure value is the (helium-corrected) vacuum gauge reading. As discussed above the pressure inside the linear trap is estimated to be a factor of 10 higher. Depending on the delivered ion beam current, the ions are accumulated for a period $`T_{\mathrm{accu}}=0.01\mathrm{}1000`$ ms. Then the ions are allowed to complete their cooling into the trap potential minimum for an additional period $`T_{\mathrm{cool}}=2`$ ms before they are ejected. The timing of the switching of the cavity is adapted to the mass-dependent time of flight of the ions. For a 2.65-keV extraction and an $`A=40`$ ion, $`t_{\mathrm{switch}}=12\mu `$s. The system has been tested with repetition rates up to 5 Hz. In general, repetition rates of $``$1 Hz are used for the mass measurements.

## 6 Performance of the ISOLTRAP ion beam buncher

A number of systematic investigations have been performed with the buncher in order to characterize its performance and to compare the results with simulations. For these measurements, both ions from ISOLDE and from the test ion source have been used.

### 6.1 Injection, capture, and ejection

#### 6.1.1 Ion energy

A critical parameter for the injection and capture of the ions into the buncher is the energy of the ions when they enter the system. This energy is determined by the potential of the linear trap on the HV platform with respect to the initial ion beam energy. If the potential is too high, then the ions are not able to enter the system. If it is too low, then the energy loss in the gas is not sufficient to prevent the ions from leaving the system on the exit side or to be stopped on the extraction diaphragm.

In order to optimize the injection and the platform potential, two kinds of measurements are performed. In the first case, all electrodes of the extraction system (see Fig. 12) are connected together for a direct current measurement. Radiofrequency and DC potentials are applied to the segmented rods as given in Tab. 2 for the ejection mode. No buffer-gas is used.

In Fig. 18 (top) the result of such a measurement is shown for a 30-keV 132Xe+-ion beam as a function of the potential of the HV platform. At the ion beam energy of 30 keV a maximum in the transmission is observed. Increasing the potential from 30 000 V to 30 030 V gives a sharp drop in transmission. At a potential larger than 30 030 V no ions are transmitted. For potentials lower than 30 kV and correspondingly higher ion beam energy in the system, the transmission decreases gradually. This can be understood since the focusing of the ion optics in the injection part was optimized for a beam entering the cooler and buncher at about 20 eV kinetic energy.

This transmission mode of operation is particularly useful for a fast tuning of the beam injection into the cooler and buncher. The platform potential is set to the value giving maximum transmission and then the current at the end of the structure is monitored as a function of focusing and steering voltages applied to ion optical elements in the ISOLDE beam line.

For fine tuning of the injection (in particular of the platform potential), the full accumulation-ejection cycle has to be employed. The result of such a measurement (performed with a buffer gas pressure of $`p_{\mathrm{He}}=110^2`$ mbar) is shown in the bottom part of Fig. 18. Plotted as a function of the platform voltage are the average number of 132Xe+ ions per cycle extracted from the buncher and detected by the MCP detector. It should be noted that the optimum value for the platform potential has shifted by about 25 eV, which means that a maximum capture efficiency requires an injection of the ions at an energy slightly lower than that for best transmission.

#### 6.1.2 Radiofrequency parameters

Both, the amplitude and the frequency of the RF potential should have an effect on the ion transmission through the linear trap and on the storage of the ions. Due to technical reasons, the frequency of the RF circuit used in this work was fixed to $`\nu _{\mathrm{RF}}`$1 MHz. Therefore, only measurements on the effect of a change of the RF amplitude were performed. The result of such a measurement is shown in Fig. 19. The upper part shows an injection and transmission measurement similar to those described above. The ion current at the end of the structure is plotted as a function of the amplitude $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}`$ of the applied radiofrequency. As expected, the transmission steadily increases with increasing amplitude (and deeper radial pseudopotential). Above $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}120`$ V, the transmitted current saturates. The lower figure shows the result of a measurement where the Xe ions are accumulated, cooled ($`p_{\mathrm{He}}=110^2`$ mbar) and ejected. Shown is the number of detected ions as a function of $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}`$. It can be seen that a certain threshold amplitude of $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}75`$ V is required in order to obtain ions from the trap. The reason is that for too low RF amplitudes, the defocusing radial part of the DC potential at the axial potential minimum of the trap is stronger than the generated pseudopotential, as explained in section 3.1. The ions are transmitted to the “trapping” region where they are finally lost radially. Using (6) and the actual trap parameters, one obtains a threshold amplitude of $`U_{\mathrm{RF},\mathrm{min}}60`$ V which is in good agreement with the experimentally observed value.

#### 6.1.3 Buffer gas pressure

The accumulation of the ions in the linear ion trap requires sufficient energy dissipation in the buffer gas (see Fig. 3) and hence a high enough pressure. If the pressure is too low, then most of the ions will hit the exit electrode of the linear ion trap and are lost. Figure 20 shows the number of ions ejected from the trap for constant injection conditions as a function of the gas pressure. It can be seen that a He pressure of a few $`10^3`$ mbar is required in order to observe any ions. Above $`p_{\mathrm{He}}10^2`$ mbar the number that can be extracted starts to saturate.

### 6.2 Efficiency

After finding good parameters for the operation of the cooler and buncher the efficiency of the system was determined. From a current measurement as shown in Fig. 18 (top) and a comparison with the beam current measured with the Faraday-cup in front of the system, its injection and guiding efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{trans}}`$ was determined. Such measurements have been carried out with ISOLDE beams from various ion sources. Values for the transmission $`ϵ_{\mathrm{trans}}^{\mathrm{exp}}`$ between 20% and 40% were found. This is in good agreement with the theoretical value of $`ϵ_{\mathrm{trans}}^{\mathrm{theo}}35`$ % (see Section 3.3.1).

Most interesting is the total efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{total}}`$ of the cooler and buncher, which is defined as the ratio of the number of ions injected into the system and the number of ions finally counted in the extracted ion pulse. The measurements are performed in the following way: an attenuated ISOLDE beam, but still intense enough to perform a reliable current measurement (typically a few pA), is transported to the apparatus. For the injection into the buncher, a very short opening time for the ISOLDE beam gate is used in order to inject only a well defined small number of ions $`N_{\mathrm{ion}}`$ into the buncher. These ions are accumulated, cooled, ejected, and finally detected with the MCP detector. As mentioned above, this detector, which is normally only used for simple monitoring purposes, is not equipped with an electron-repelling grid. Therefore, according to , only about half of the maximum possible efficiency of $`50`$ % is achieved in the case of moderately heavy ions with 2.5 keV energy. With the number of counted events being $`N_{\mathrm{MCP}}`$ and an efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{MCP}}30\%`$, the overall efficiency is given by $`ϵ_{\mathrm{total}}=(N_{\mathrm{MCP}}/ϵ_{\mathrm{MCP}})/N_{\mathrm{ion}}`$.

Total efficiency measurements have been performed for various Xe isotopes and values of $`ϵ_{\mathrm{total}}12\mathrm{}15`$ % were achieved. This value allows to study ions from the weakest radioactive beams available at ISOLDE with the ISOLTRAP spectrometer. However, compared to the efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{trans}}`$ for injection and transmission, the total efficiency $`ϵ_{\mathrm{total}}`$ is lower by a factor of two to three. Storage time measurements for alkali ions have shown lifetimes of up to several 100 ms. For Xe ions as used for the efficiency measurement, no significant charge exchange with gas impurities has been observed, which could have caused ion loss. A possible explanation is that the MCP efficiency is lower than assumed. It is also likely that an optimal match of ISOLDE beam emittance and buncher acceptance has not yet been achieved. This will be investigated in forthcoming test measurements accompanied by further beam injection simulations.

### 6.3 Cooling and beam emittance

#### 6.3.1 Damping of ion motion and cooling

In order to illustrate the damping of the axial ion motion in the cooler and buncher for different ions and types of buffer gas, very short ion pulses have been injected. The DC potential of the cooler was permanently set to the extraction mode, which means that the ions were directly accelerated to the MCP detector after a single passage through the system.

The result of such a measurement for various ion species and gases is shown in Fig. 21. With buffer gas of higher mass, the ion pulses arrive considerably later and are broadened. This can be understood by looking at the microscopic beam simulations shown in Fig. 4. There the trajectories show a significant scattering also for the axial motion. In the experiment the transmission of 39K+ ions through 84Kr was also tried, but, as expected no ion was able to reach the detector.

An illustration of the transverse cooling process as a function of time is given in Fig. 22. In the experiment, 133Cs+ ions were injected into the linear trap for a short period $`T_{\mathrm{accu}}=2\mu `$s. The figure shows the number of ions ejected out of the trap as a function of the cooling time $`T_{\mathrm{cool}}`$ after injection. This measurement was performed for helium and argon as buffer gases at about the same pressure. For short cooling times, the number of ions that can be extracted is small and only above $`T_{\mathrm{cool}}>300\mu `$s is the maximum number reached. This is because at the pressure of $`p_{\mathrm{He}}310^3`$ mbar used here several oscillations are required inside the trap before the radial extent of the ion cloud is smaller than the radius of the extraction hole. The figure also illustrates that stronger damping, and as a consequence faster cooling, is provided by the heavier buffer gas.

Figure 23 illustrates once more the axial cooling process. In the top figure the temporal width of the ejected ion pulse is shown as a function of the cooling time for the case of 39K+ ions and $`p_{\mathrm{He}}=2.510^3`$ mbar. As can be seen in the figure, an exponential decrease of the pulse width with time is observed. The pulse width decreases with decreasing ion temperature and smaller axial distribution of the ions in the trap. The width is therefore a good indicator of the ion temperature. The time constant $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ of the curve can to first order be regarded as a measure of the cooling time constant. The value of $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}=0.5`$ ms obtained in the measurement shown in Fig. 23 is comparable to a value of 0.3 ms calculated from ion mobility data and an estimate of the pressure inside the buncher close to the trapping region of $`p10^2`$ mbar. Figure 23 also shows that the cooling time of the ions in the trap should be several times $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ in order to extract ion pulses with minimum temperature out of the trap. The bottom part of Fig. 23 shows the measured time constants $`\tau _{\mathrm{cool}}`$ for Cs and K ions as a function of the pressure. For the highest pressures, time constants down to a few hundred microseconds are observed.

#### 6.3.2 Cooling limit and emittance

For a determination of the final ion temperature both in the axial and radial direction, two kind of measurements have been carried out. In both cases, ions were accumulated and cooled for $`T_{\mathrm{cool}}=20`$ ms to reach their equilibrium temperature.

For the determination of the axial temperature, the number of ions in a pulse has been measured temporally resolved with the MCP detector. The measured shape of the ion pulse can be compared to calculated shapes based on ion distributions at different temperatures. Such pulse shapes are shown in the top part of Fig. 24 for 133Cs ions extracted from the linear trap and accelerated to 30 keV. The data are plotted with respect to the time of ejection from the trap. The points correspond to the experimental data, the curves to calculated shapes for ion distributions with temperatures of 300 K, 500 K, and 800 K. A good agreement is achieved for a temperature of 300 K giving evidence that the ions reach the temperature of the buffer gas. This is in accordance with the predictions of Fig. 5. The bottom part of Fig. 24 shows the calculated energy distribution of the ejected ions. For the calculation, the confirmed 300-K ion distribution was taken together with the electric fields for the extraction as used in the experiment. From the time and energy spread of the ion pulses shown in the figure, a value for the longitudinal emittance of the ion pulse ejected from the buncher can be obtained. The total value is $`ϵ_{\mathrm{long}}10`$ eV $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$.

The transverse temperature of the ions can be extracted from a beam emittance measurement. Such a measurement has been performed in the following way. The beam observation system was mounted at the 90 deflector chamber (Fig. 1 with the deflector removed). Ion pulses with an energy of 2.5 keV were created by using the pulsed cavity. With an einzel lens in front of the deflector chamber, the beam was focused onto the detector and the beam profile was observed with a CCD camera. The profile was found to be Gaussian-shaped with 90 % of the beam within a radius of about 1.8 mm. A beam scraper mounted on a linear feed-through at a distance of 500 mm in front of the beam viewing system was used to determine the size of the beam at this position. There a beam radius of 2.5 mm (corresponding to $`>90`$ % beam intensity) was observed. From this a beam divergence of 5 mrad is derived. Combining both measurements gives a rough upper limit for the transverse beam emittance of $`ϵ_{\mathrm{trans}}10\pi `$ mm mrad.

If the extracted pulse was accelerated to 60 keV instead of 2.5 keV, it would have an emittance of about $`2\pi `$ mm mrad, which corresponds to more than tenfold improvement with respect to the original ISOLDE beam. This shows that gas-filled radiofrequency ion guides and traps can very effectively be used to improve the emittance of ion beams.

## 7 Future developments

A new type of radiofrequency quadrupole ion beam cooler and buncher has been investigated recently. It will be briefly discussed here while a comprehensive study including simulations will be presented in .

Figure 25 shows the principal layout of the system, which is based on a segmented cylinder. Four segments of constant width are used to create the radiofrequency quadrupole field by applying RF voltages $`U_{\mathrm{RF}}`$ with appropriate phases. An axial trapping potential $`\mathrm{\Phi }(z)`$ is produced by applying DC-voltages $`U_{\mathrm{DC}}`$ to eight tapered electrodes, which are placed between grounded counter electrodes. For the ejection of accumulated ions, the voltage applied to the four short tapered electrodes is switched to a lower value.

The advantage of this system is, compared to the present system, that the RF and DC voltage supplies are decoupled and no matching circuit like the one shown in Fig. 16 is needed. Furthermore, only four electrical feedthroughs are required for the system shown in Fig. 25. However, higher RF and DC voltages have to be applied, which will require a very careful design of the electrodes.

Information gained from the present setup, from additional ion optical simulations, and from voltage breakdown tests with prototype electrode systems will be used as input for a detailed design of such a new simplified system of the ISOLTRAP ion beam cooler and buncher.

## 8 Conclusions and Outlook

In the work presented here, we have demonstrated for the first time the accumulation, bunching, cooling and emittance improvement of radioactive ion beams from an on-line mass separator by means of a linear radiofrequency ion trap. The efficiency of the system and the properties of the energy-variable ion bunches are in agreement with the theoretical expectations.

Compared to the previously used Paul trap system , the efficiency of ISOLTRAP has been increased by three orders of magnitude. This enables ISOLTRAP to be applied to very exotic isotopes with low production rates. First measurements of this kind have already been successfully performed. The investigation of the masses of neutron-deficient mercury isotopes was extended to $`A=182`$ . A mass measurement of the very short-lived ($`T_{1/2}=173`$ ms) isotope 33Ar became possible , delivered by ISOLDE with an intensity of only a few thousand atoms per second. With this increased sensitivity, a very fruitful mass measurement program will be possible in the future.

The work has again confirmed that the concept of using trapping techniques to manipulate radioactive ion beams is very successful. Based on the experience with the present linear ion trap system we study now the design of a larger beam buncher for the preparation of short low-emittance ion pulses with close to 100 % efficiency. With a pulsed cavity as used in this work, the energy of the pulses can easily be varied from nearly zero up to more than 100 keV. The variability of this energy is expected to be very useful for nuclear-decay study experiments, laser spectroscopy experiments on unstable isotopes, as well as for solid-state and surface physics studies using radioactive probes.

Furthermore, the use of linear radiofrequency quadrupole ion accumulators, coolers and bunchers will play an important role in schemes presently discussed for the stopping of relativistic beams of nuclear reaction products and their conversion into low-energy ion beams.

The authors wish to thank J. Bernard, W. Hornung, G. Marx and W. Quint at GSI Darmstadt, F. Ames and P. Schmidt from the university of Mainz and the CERN summer students S. Lindner, S. Harto, and C. Richter for their valuable help during the development and commissioning of the system. This work was partly carried out within the EXOTRAPS project in the EU LSF-RTD program and financially supported under contract number ERBFMGECT980099. It was also supported by NSERC of Canada.