Laser-Cooled Ion Beams and Strongly Coupled Plasmas for Precision Experiments

The first part of this thesis summarizes the results of
laser-cooling of relativistic C3+ ion beams at the ESR/GSI. It is
shown that laser cooling at high beam energies is feasible and that
momentum spreads much smaller than those observed for electron
cooling can be achieved. Resulty indicate that space-charge
dominated beams have been observed, reaching the regime of strong
coupling which is an essential prerequisite for beam
crystallization. Moderate electron cooling was employed to create
three-dimensionally cold beams. With the laser cooled beams it was
possible to perform precision VUV spectroscopy of the cooling
transition. In the second part results on large-scale realistic
simulations on the stopping of highly charged ions in a
laser-cooled one-component plasma of 24Mg+ ions confined in a
harmonic potential are presented. It is shown that cooling times
short enough for cooling unstable nuclei can be achieved and fast
recooling of the plasma is possible. With this cooling scheme
highly charged ions for precision experiments such as mass
spectrometry in Penning traps at millikelvin temperatures can be
delivered.