Resonance ionization laser ion sources Original Research Article

The three main requirements to the ion source of an ISOL facility are efficiency, selectivity and rapidity. For many metallic elements these requirements are ideally fulfilled by a resonance ionization laser ion source (RILIS). Presently such ion sources are used at the RIB facilities IRIS (Gatchina), ISOLDE (CERN), LISOL (Leuven), TIARA (Takasaki) and IMP (Lanzhou) to provide beams with low isobaric contamination. The isotopically pure beams enabled to make spectacular progress, for instance in nuclear spectroscopy of very rare isotopes. The scanning of the hyperfine structure with a small bandwidth laser allows moreover to separate individual isomers. The RILIS has also been used as a sensitive tool for atomic spectroscopy (measurement of the isotope shift and of nuclear moments) of exotic isotopes.