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Abstract

The Cryogenic Storage Ring (CSR) in Heidelberg is a next-generation electrostatic
ion storage ring. Its experimental vacuum chambers are cooled down to a
temperature of 6 K, leading to residual gas densities of < 140 cm^-3 and to storage
times of fast ion beams (up to 300 keV=u) on the order of hours. The cold radiative
environment and the mass-independent storage over long time scales give
access to the study of the stability, spectroscopic properties and interactions for
a great variety of atomic, molecular and cluster ions.
Several ion sources are foreseen to be operated on the 300 keV acceleration platform
of the CSR facility in order to produce a wide range of ion beams from light
and heavy atoms, molecules, clusters and biomolecules.
For the purpose of testing those sources (especially a new Laser VAPorization
source producing cool (SF₆)^-_N
clusters) and of optimizing their output independently
of the CSR facility, a magnetic mass spectrometer is designed, set up and
characterized with a Penning ion source in this thesis. Additionally, a method for
precisely (_< 0.2%) determining the effective electrical potential U’ at which ions
are born inside the Penning source without prior knowledge of the exact magnetic
bending radius is developed.