Cryogenic ion traps in spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, and cold chemistry

Progress in molecular science strongly depends on inventions and advances in innovative experimental tools such as specific light sources, molecular beams, imaging detectors, etc. In the center of this contribution are cryogenic radio frequency ion traps and recent break throughs made with such devices.

In the introduction of my talk, I give a short review of this versatile technique. Pushing the trap temperature down to 2.6 K and using He buffer gas pulses with densities above 1016 cm–3 opened up new applications.

Efficient cooling allowed us to identify C60+ as carrier of diffuse interstellar bands [1], to record high resolution spectra of He-H3+ [2], and to obtain routinely IR spectra of mass selected ions [3]. In addition to these results I will mention briefly high resolution results for near threshold photodissociation of cold CH+.

[1] E. K. Campbell, M. Holz, D. Gerlich & J.P. Maier, Nature 523 (2015) 322.
[2] I. Savic, D. Gerlich, O. Asvany, P. Jusko, S. Schlemmer Mol. Phys. 113 (2015) 2320.
[3] J. Roithová, A. Gray, E. Andris, J. Jašík, D. Gerlich Acc. Chem. Res. 49 (2016) 223