Off-line commissioning of the ISOLDE cooler
Résumé
Among the multiple progresses in radioactive ion beam (RIB) manipulation for physics experiments, the beam cooling and bunching in gas-filled RF traps has become a widely used technique. It is particularly well adapted to precision experiments, such as Penning trap mass spectrometry or collinear laser spectroscopy. At ISOLDE, an rf quadrupole cooler and ion buncher (RFQCB) has been designed and developed to deliver radioactive beams of improved quality among most of the on-line experiments. The results of the first off-line tests have shown that high transmission efficiencies could be achieved with different RIBs of alkali metals, as it was expected. During the later tests that are presented here a special care was dedicated to the reproduction of the on-line experimental conditions of ISOLDE, with a wide range of different RIBs. This contribution will present the latest off-line tests.