The University of Notre Dame Multi-Reflection Time-of-Flight mass spectrometer for the N = 126 beam factory

The production of exotic nuclei at the vicinity of the N = 126 peak of the rapid-neutron capture process as for a long time pose a challenge. A new facility currently under construction at Argonne National Laboratory aims at undertaking the challenge by producing these difficult nuclei via multi-nucleon transfers reactions. The facility will first include a large-volume gas cell to collect and thermalize the reaction products. Then, upon extraction from the gas cell and radio-frequency ion guide, the ion beam will be separated by a high-resolution mass separator magnet and a multi-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR-ToF) for the removal of isobaric contamination. This MR-ToF has been built and commissioned in an offline test setup at the University of Notre Dame. The commissioning results and off-line performance of the MR-ToF will be presented.