The CRIS Technique

CRIS stands for Collinear Resonance Ionization Spectroscopy. The CRIS technique combines the high resolution innate to collinear laser spectroscopy with the sensitivity of ion detection.

Lasers are used to probe the hyperfine structure of the atom of interest. When the lasers are on the correct frequency, they step-wise excite and ionize an electron from the atom.

The ions created by the resonance-ionization process are counted with an MCP, a charge-particle detector.

Scanning the frequency of the lasers allows the hyperfine structure of an isotope to be measured, and the fundamentral properties of the isotope's nucleus extracted.