[en] Ion traps and storage rings provide unique experimental conditions for the study of the properties of stable or radioactive, singly or highly charged ions. Storage of the confined particles for extended periods of times and cooling are the key issues for extremely high accuracy and sensitivity. At many accelerators such facilities are in operation or planned for experiments in atomic and nuclear physics

[en] An overview is given on atomic physics techniques for manipulating radioactive beams and for extracting nuclear properties. Emphasis is put on recent developments involving storing and cooling of radioactive species in ion traps, storage rings, and laser neutral-atom traps. The recent progress achieved in mass and laser spectroscopy as well as in weak-interaction studies will be discussed

[en] Studies of the hyperfine structure (HFS) and isotopic shift (IS) in short-lived Hg isotopes are reported. All the HFS and IS data known in the n = 254 nm line are presented as a function of the neutron number. This spans ²⁰⁵Hg to ¹⁸¹Hg , the most complete set of values collected for one element. The IS data are converted into changes of nuclear charge radii and results are yielded on the shape transition and shape staggering in the light Hg isotopes. (C.F.)

[en] A survey is given of spectroscopic techniques applied to the determination of nuclear ground state properties of short-lived isotopes as produced in on-line isotope separators. (Author)

[en] Full text: Highly-charged ions (HCI) confined in Penning traps and storage rings have been applied for high-precision experiments such as mass spectrometry or x-ray, laser and radiofrequency spectroscopy. Storage and cooling of HCI in trapping devices are prerequisites for such high-accuracy experiments in which even a single stored particle can be observed. In the case of a radioactive ion, the fate of an individual ion, undergoing a nuclear decay, can be studied in detail by observing the disappearance of the signal of the mother and the appearance of that of the daughter isotope. Since the mass resolving power of mass spectrometry using Penning traps or storage rings increases with the charge state, charge breeding and the use of HCI is planned for quite a number of radioactive beam facilities. Few-electron ions are simple systems which are calculable by theory with high accuracy. In such systems, the electric field strength increases roughly with the third power of the nuclear charge and reaches values much larger than presently achievable with the most powerful short-pulse lasers. These HCI up to hydrogen-like U⁹¹⁺ are testing grounds for QED in the little explored regime of extreme electromagnetic fields. In order to increase the accuracy further for investigating simple systems, the Highly charged Ion TRAP (HITRAP) facility is presently being built up at GSI. Stable or radioactive HCI are produced by stripping relativistic ions in a target and injecting them into the storage ring ESR at GSI. After electron cooling and deceleration to 4 MeV per nucleon, these ions are ejected out of the storage ring, decelerated further in a linear decelerator, and injected into a Penning trap where a temperature of 4 K is reached by electron and resistive cooling. From here, the cooled HCI are transferred at low energies to experimental setups. A large number of unique experiments with very heavy ions up to hydrogen-like U⁹¹⁺ are being prepared by the international HITRAP Collaboration: clean samples of stored and cooled HCI in a chosen specific charge state can be investigated by observation of x-rays from a quasi point-like source. If the accuracy of QED calculations is improved, the fine structure constant can be determined with high accuracy measuring the g-factor of the bound electron. Mass measurements can be performed with extreme accuracy of better than 10^-11 and with single-ion sensitivity by using stored HCI. A measurement and comparison of the nuclear g-factor of the bare nucleus with that of the neutral atom allows one to check calculations of the diamagnetic correction for the first time. The hyperfine structure of the ground state in hydrogen-like systems can be determined. Optical pumping of the M1 transition will result in electronic and nuclear polarization enabling clean nuclear-decay experiments and, in this way, sensitive tests of weak interaction. Recoil ion momentum spectroscopy, ion-surface interaction experiments, and hollow atom spectroscopy can be performed in a regime of extremely low energies using HCI. (author)

[en] Hyperfine structure and isotope shift of radioactive Hg, Au and Cd isotopes have been determined by optical spectroscopy. In all cases the atoms were confined in a resonance cell. The various variants of the cell technique and alternative methods as the resonance ionization spectroscopy related to the investigation of short-lived nuclei are described, and some results are discussed. (Auth.)

[en] The combination of the high yields of isotopically pure samples available at accelerators and reactors with sensitive Doppler- free laser- spectroscopic techniques led to a renaissance of optical spectroscopy applied to nuclear physics. Today, there is systematic information on long isotopic chains of 19 elements with over 200 isotopes and over 20 isomers in addition to the HFS data on the nuclei in or near the valley of β stability. (Auth.)

[en] The author outlines what has been learned of nuclear physics by the application of lasers. He concentrates on the determination of nuclear ground state properties by optical spectroscopy. Five questions are discussed: which nuclear reaction should be used for the production of short-lived nuclei; which method, which laser should be applied; how can nuclear moments and radii be evaluated from hyperfine structure and isomer shift data; what have we learned; what should be studied. (Auth.)

[en] The highest precision in mass measurements on short-lived radionuclides is obtained using trapping and cooling techniques. Here, the experimental storage ring (ESR) at GSI/Darmstadt and the tandem Penning trap mass spectrometer ISOLTRAP at ISOLDE/CERN play an important role. Status and recent results on mass measurements of radioactive nuclides with ESR and ISOLTRAP are summarized

[en] One of the necessary experimental quantities required for the test of unitarity of the fundamental Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) quark mixing matrix can be gained from nuclear beta decay. However, the short-lived beta-decaying nuclei have to be produced on-line in order to provide a large enough sample to carry out the experiments. At the new ISAC (Isotope Separator and Accelerator) facility at the TRIUMF national laboratory in Vancouver, Canada, ideal conditions are provided for the production of some of the most interesting nuclides in that respect. The experimental information that is needed are branching ratio, half-life and Q-value of the specific beta decay. For the first two components experiments have already been carried out or are in preparation at ISAC (Ball et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 (2001) 1454, and experiments E823 and E909 approved at TRIUMF), for the third one, we are proposing to set up a unique facility capable of high accuracy mass measurements δm/m≤1x10^-8 on very short-lived isotopes (T_1/2≤50 ms) employing a Penning trap spectrometer coupled to an electron beam ion trap (EBIT) for charge breeding. The main goal of TITAN is mass measurements, however, the unique combination of the systems will allow to carry out high precision measurements in other fields of nuclear and also atomic physics