Letter of Intent to the ISOLDE and Neutron Time-of-Flight Committee In-source laser spectroscopy of mercury isotopes September 30 , 2013

This Letter of Intent proposes to address issues surrounding the possible insource laser spectroscopy measurements of Hg isotopes with RILIS. Key to these studies is the successful, and so far untested, coupling of a molten Pb target to the RILIS ion-source cavity, due to the increase in production yield it affords over the UCx target. At the moment, the ionisation scheme for Hg is inefficient and should be improved and tested inline with the target–cavity enhancements. It is also expected that the issues addressed by this letter will have consequnces for future planned experiments, e.g. transfer reactions on isomeric beams of Hg. Requested shifts: 3 shifts