MATS is an acronym standing for Measurements with an Advanced Trapping System, which is a Helmholtz research group for young investigators. It is funded by the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres between the cooperating institutes Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mbH in Darmstadt (GSI), Germany and the Department of Physics at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. The research subjects are experiments with stored and cooled ions.
The development of new storing and cooling techniques for ions and, thereby, realizable precision experiments with these particles has rapidly become more important in the last few years. Among others, this is pointed out by the enfranchisement of several Nobel prizes on this field. The experiments and their applications are not only in the center of modern atomic physics but also in lots of other areas of natural sciences. At the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI) at Darmstadt, precision experiments with stored and cooled ions are performed with a lot of experience. Especially Penning traps are used for three dimensional inclusion of ions.
At GSI, the Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) and the ion trap facility SHIPTRAP are used for investigations of stored and cooled radio-nuclides. Further, the department of atomic physics runs the ion trap experiment ISOLTRAP at the online mass-separator ISOLDE/CERN in Geneva. ISOLTRAP allowed the measurement of the masses of more than 300 short-lived nuclides with a precision up to δm/m = 1.0E-8 in the last years. Currently, the ion trap experiment HITRAP is designed to allow analysis of hydrogen-like ions, e.g. Uranium 91+. Finally, new perspectives and big challenges for experiments with cold anti-protons and anti-hydrogen are related to the future FLAIR facility at GSI. At the University of Mainz, ion trap experiments with hydrogen-like systems in order to determine the g factor of the bound electron have been carried out very successfully for many years.
The group of young researchers with the subject "Experiments with stored and cooled ions" under supervision of Klaus Blaum serves as a link between the University of Mainz and GSI. This group will contribute to carry out complex and time intensive developments with the aid of diploma and doctoral students at the university. Further, this students are going to perform innovative and unique experiments at big research facilities like GSI. All planned projects are a part of European networks and have an international atmosphere.