Storage of negative carbon ions in an electrostatic ring

Abstract

Negative carbon atomic ions and cluster ions were stored in an electrostatic ion storage ring. The lifetime of the metastable atomic ion is heavily affected by the blackbody radiation from the surrounding environment. By introducing rare gas target into the ring, collision-induced detachment cross sections of the atomic ion C- were obtained. For cluster ions C n- (n = 2 ∼ 8), decay of metastable ions with sub-millisecond to millisecond lifetime was commonly observed. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd.