An ion-atom merged beams setup at the Cryogenic Storage Ring

We describe a merged beams experiment to study ion-neutral collisions at the Cryogenic Storage Ring of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. We produce fast beams of neutral atoms in their ground term at kinetic energies between 10 and 300 keV by laser photodetachment of negative ions. The neutral atoms are injected along one of the straight sections of the storage ring, where they can react with stored molecular ions. Several dedicated detectors have been installed to detect charged reaction products of various product-to-reactant mass ranges. The relative collision energy can be tuned by changing the kinetic energy of the neutral beam in an independent drift tube. We give a detailed description of the setup and its capabilities, and present proof-of-principle measurements on the reaction of neutral C atoms with D₂ ⁺ ions.