Multi-Reflection Time-of-Flight Mass Spectroscopy for Superheavy Nuclides

The atomic masses of isotopes of elements beyond fermium, which can presently only be produced online via fusion-evaporation reactions, have until recently been determined only from α decay chains reaching nuclides with known atomic masses. Especially in the case of lower-yield nuclides, for which the sufficiently detailed nuclear spectroscopy required to fully determine the nuclear structure is not possible, such indirect mass determinations may suffer systematic errors. For many superheavy nuclides, their decay chains end in spontaneous fission or in β-decay prior to reaching nuclides of known mass. To address this dearth of accurate atomic masses, we have developed a multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrograph that can make use of decay-correlations to accurately and precisely determine atomic masses for the very low-yield superheavy nuclides.