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Abstract

Cooling processes and especially the processes of delayed electron emission and delayed atom emission of clusters in the gas phase have been subject to research for
the past decades. For the anionic Al-4 clusters, a lot was learned about their cooling processes in room-temperature experiments. Much less is known about their cooling behaviour at ambient temperatures far below room temperature. Suitablenexperimental conditions for further studies can be provided by the Cryogenic StoragenRing (CSR). It is a cryogenic electrostatic ion storage ring, which is capable of storing ion beams in an ultracold environment with very low vacuum pressure. In orderto produce cold cluster ions for the CSR, a new versatile Laser VAPorization (LVAP)ion source was designed. With this ion source, the cluster ions can be produced in
already low rovibrational states. In this thesis, the LVAP ion source was taken intomoperation as a first step towards production of cold Al−4 clusters and monitoring their
cooling processes. The ion source and its auxiliary equipment were assembled and set
up at the Ion Source Test Bench (ISTB). All necessary tests and alignment steps were
successfully performed. A roadmap of measurement steps required for commissioning
the LVAP ion source was developed. The first step of the commissioning process was
concluded and the production of rather stable and short (about 25 µs) ion pulses was
achieved.