Development of the helium-jet fed on-line mass separator RAMA. Pt. 1

Development of general experimental systems capable of mass analysis of radioactive species with half-lives as short as 50 ms and with simple application to a vast majority of the chemical elements is clearly of great interest in the study of nuclei far from stability. Such an on-line system has been developed which employs a helium-jet to transport activity from the target area to a mass separator. The initial development and early experiment use of this recoil atom mass analysis system (RAMA) are described. RAMA as a typical total efficiency of 0.01% which should apply to approx. equal to 75 elements of melting point < 20000C. This efficiency is for a mass resolution M/ΔM approx. equal to 200. (orig.)