%0 Generic
%A Cerchiari, Giovanni
%D 2018
%F heidok:24365
%R 10.11588/heidok.00024365
%T Laser spectroscopy of La- and anion trapping  with a view to laser cooling
%U https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/24365/
%X Direct laser cooling of negative ions has not yet been achieved. An important potential application of  this technique is the use of cooled negative ions to sympathetically cool antiprotons. Antihydrogen,  synthesized from cold antiprotons, is suitable for fundamental studies tests of CPT symmetry and the  weak equivalence principle with antimatter.  During this work, the negative lanthanum ion was identified as a good candidate for laser cooling  using in-flight spectroscopy. Lanthanum anions were produced as a beam with a kinetic energy of a few  keV and were excited using a tunable laser. The light radiation was superimposed to the ions both in a  collinear and in a transverse setup to study the laser cooling transition.  Trapping of anions both in a Penning trap and in a Paul trap was demonstrated as a prerequisite to  increase the interaction time of anions and light towards the first realization of laser cooling. Detailed  studies were performed both traps to find the best conditions for anions capture. All trap parameters were  optimized with a view to a high capture efficiency as well as optimal properties of the confined plasma.