GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research

Design and development of resonant structures as Schottky noise detectors for various frequencies

Trainee: Xiangcheng Chen
Supervisor: Markus Steck

‌‌The aim of this project is to design and develop resonant structures as Schottky noise detectors for different applications in mass and lifetime spectrometry in FAIR storage rings.

Schottky noise detection is a powerful tool in storage rings to determine beam properties and to continuously optimize the beam quality. It is crucial for stochastic cooling which is applied at GSI for pre-cooling hot rare isotope beams. For highly charged ions it was demonstrated in 2010 that even single ions can be detected by this method. A resonant Schottky pickup was built into ESR at GSI Darmstadt and later also in CSRe in Lanzhou. 

 

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‌For the new FAIR storage rings, high sensitivity Schottky noise detection are crucial where they will have two major applications: The extension of the analysis method to shorter isotope lifetimes and the detection of low intensity secondary beams, which also contains antiprotons. Also, the new Schottky noise detectors possess the ability to sense the transversal as well as longitudinal particle signals, to meet the 4p detection challenge of FAIR storage rings. As a result of lower bandwidth of the resonant structures, different detectors may be needed in order to tune to different harmonic frequencies of the signal.

Images courtesy of GSI

Video:

Scientist in Charge:

Markus Steck