Isobaric beam purification for high precision Penning trap mass spectrometry of radioactive isotope beams with SWIFT

The Stored Waveform Inverse Fourier Transform (SWIFT) technique offers general and versatile broadband, mass-selective excitation schemes. The method has hitherto been unharnessed for high precision Penning trap mass spectrometry, in which the atomic mass is determined, and is of particular importance at radioactive isotope beam facilities. Herein, we present the first implementation of SWIFT to clean isobaric contaminants at such a spectrometer. The isobaric separation of CO+ and N-2(+) as well as a high-accuracy mass measurement with SWIFT cleaning were demonstrated at the Low Energy Beam and Ion Trap (LEBIT) facility; resolving powers of 4 x 10(4) (Delta nu = 300 Hz) and 2 x 10(5) (Delta nu = 60 Hz) were achieved for Na-23(+) for cleaning times of 20 and 100 ms respectively. These measurements demonstrate the viability of SWIFT for fast, efficient, and universal beam purification at high-precision Penning trap mass spectrometers. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.