Cooled heavy ion beams at the ESR

The storage ring ESR has been used in various operational modes for experiments with electron cooled heavy ion beams. Besides the standard storage mode including injection and beam accumulation the deceleration of highly charged ions has been demonstrated. Beams of highly charged ions have been injected and accumulated and finally decelerated to a minimum energy of 50 MeV/u. An ultraslow extraction method using charge changing processes is now also available for cooled beams of highly charged ions. For in ring experiments the internal gas jet and the cold electron beam of the cooling system are applied as targets. High precision mass spectrometry by Schottky noise detection has been demonstrated. Operation at transition energy has been achieved with cooled beams opening the field for experiments which require an isochronous revolution of the ions.