The ISOLDE facility has undergone numerous changes over the last 17 years driven by both the physics and technical community with a common goal to improve on beam variety, beam quality and safety. Improvements have been made in civil engineering and operational equipment while continuing developments aim to ensure operations following a potential increase in primary beam intensity and energy. This paper outlines the principal technical changes incurred at ISOLDE by building on a similar publication of the facility upgrades by Kugler (2000 Hyperfine Interact. 129 23–42). It also provides an insight into future perspectives through a brief summary issues addressed in the HIE-ISOLDE design study Catherall et al (2013 Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. B 317 204–207).

The epoch of first star formation in the early Universe was dominated by simple atomic and molecular species consisting mainly of two elements: hydrogen and helium. Gaining insight into this constitutive era requires a thorough understanding of molecular reactivity under primordial conditions. We used a cryogenic ion storage ring combined with a merged electron beam to measure state-specific rate coefficients of dissociative recombination, a process by which electrons destroy molecular ions. We found a pronounced decrease of the electron recombination rates for the lowest rotational states of the helium hydride ion (HeH+), compared with previous measurements at room temperature. The reduced destruction of cold HeH+ translates into an enhanced abundance of this primordial molecule at redshifts of first star and galaxy formation.

We report on the realization and operation of a fast ion beam trap of the linear electrostatic type employing liquid helium cooling to reach extremely low blackbody radiation temperature and residual gas density and, hence, long storage times of more than 5 min which are unprecedented for keV ion beams. Inside a beam pipe that can be cooled to temperatures <15 K, with 1.8 K reached in some locations, an ion beam pulse can be stored at kinetic energies of 2-20 keV between two electrostatic mirrors. Along with an overview of the cryogenic trap design, we present a measurement of the residual gas density inside the trap resulting in only 2 x 10(3) cm(-3), which for a room temperature environment corresponds to a pressure in the 10(-14) mbar range. The device, called the cryogenic trap for fast ion beams, is now being used to investigate molecules and clusters at low temperatures, but has also served as a design prototype for the cryogenic heavy-ion storage ring currently under construction at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics.

An electrostatic cryogenic storage ring, CSR, for beams of anions and cations with up to 300 keV kinetic energy per unit charge has been designed, constructed, and put into operation. With a circumference of 35 m, the ion-beam vacuum chambers and all beam optics are in a cryostat and cooled by a closed-cycle liquid helium system. At temperatures as low as (5.5 ± 1) K inside the ring, storage time constants of several minutes up to almost an hour were observed for atomic and molecular, anion and cation beams at an energy of 60 keV. The ion-beam intensity, energy-dependent closed-orbit shifts (dispersion), and the focusing properties of the machine were studied by a system of capacitive pickups. The Schottky-noise spectrum of the stored ions revealed a broadening of the momentum distribution on a time scale of 1000 s. Photodetachment of stored anions was used in the beam lifetime measurements. The detachment rate by anion collisions with residual-gas molecules was found to be extremely low. A residual-gas density below 140 cm(-3) is derived, equivalent to a room-temperature pressure below 10(-14) mbar. Fast atomic, molecular, and cluster ion beams stored for long periods of time in a cryogenic environment will allow experiments on collision- and radiation-induced fragmentation processes of ions in known internal quantum states with merged and crossed photon and particle beams.

We have measured electron-ion recombination for C-like Mg 6+ forming Mg 5+ , and for B-like Mg 7+ forming Mg 6+ . These studies were performed using a merged electron-ion beam arrangement at the TSR heavy ion storage ring located in Heidelberg, Germany. Both primary ions have metastable levels with significant lifetimes. Using a simple cascade model we estimate the population fractions in these metastable levels. For the Mg 6+ results, we find that the majority of the stored ions are in a metastable level, while for Mg 7+ the metastable fraction is insignificant. We present the Mg 6+ merged beams recombination rate coefficient for DR via N = 2 → N = 2 core electron excitations (ΔN = 0 DR) and for Mg 7+ via 2 → 2 and 2 → 3 core excitations. Taking the estimated metastable populations into account, we compare our results to state-of-the-art multiconfiguration Breit-Pauli theoretical calculations. Significant differences are found at low energies where theory is known to be unreliable. Moreover, for both ions we observe a discrepancy between experiment and theory for ΔN = 0 DR involving capture into high-n Rydberg levels and where the stabilization is primarily due to a radiative transition of the excited core electron. This is consistent with previous DR experiments on M-shell iron ions which were performed at TSR. The large metastable content of the Mg 6+ ion beam precludes generating a plasma recombination rate coefficient (PRRC). However, this is not an issue for Mg 7+ and we present an experimentally derived Mg 7+ PRRC for plasma temperatures from 400 K to 10 7 K with an estimated uncertainty of less than 27% at a 90% confidence level. We also provide a fit to our experimentally derived PRRC for use in plasma modeling codes.