We present a newly developed macromolecular ion accelerator mass spectrometer that combines a dual-ion-trap device and a macromolecular ion accelerator (MIA) to achieve the capability of analyzing samples with a mixture of large biomolecules. MIA greatly increases detection efficiency. The dual ion trap includes a quadrupole ion trap (QIT) and a linear ion trap (LIT) in tandem. The dual ion tra...

The utility and advantages of the recently introduced two-dimensional quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer in proteomics over the traditional three-dimensional ion trap mass spectrometer have not been systematically characterized. Here we rigorously compared the performance of these two platforms by using over 100,000 tandem mass spectra acquired with identical complex peptide mixtures and acq...

Resonance ionization laser ion sources (RILIS) are applied for the production of exotic ion beams with high isotopic and isobaric purity [1], limited only by surface ionization of unwanted atomic species. A new type of resonance ionization laser ion source is presently being deve-loped and tested at the RISIKO mass separator at Mainz University [2] for future use at on-line radioactive ion beam...

An ion trap/time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer combination has been developed in order to combine the storage capabilities of an ion trap with the speed and resolution of a time-of-flight device. The ion trap is an rf quadrupole trap which operates in the total storage mode, i.e., with the dc voltage=0 on the end caps and rf voltage on the ring electrode. The trap has an ion storage time of...

Ion mobility instruments that utilize nitrogen as buffer gas are often preceded by an ion trap and accumulation region that also uses nitrogen, and for different inert gases, no significant effects upon performance are expected for ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) of larger ions. However, we have observed significantly improved performance for an ion funnel trap upon adding helium; the signal in...

A better understanding of the scan-to-scan signal intensity variation can lead to more sophisticated algorithms for database searching and de novo peptide sequencing using single scan mass spectra. In this study, we systematically studied the variation in relative intensity of m/z values in the single scan product ion mass spectra (MS2) derived from five representative precursor ions (MS1) coll...

The proton affinities of hydrogen and oxygen are very similar. Therefore, it has been discussed that the proton transfer from the omnipresent H(3)(+) to molecular oxygen in the near thermoneutral reaction H(3)(+) + O(2) <--> O(2)H(+) + H(2) effectively binds the interstellar oxygen in O(2)H(+). In this work, the proton transfer reaction has been investigated in a low-temperature 22-pole ion tra...

Recent contributions in the field of quantum state tomography have shown that, despite the exponential growth of Hilbert space with the number of subsystems, tomography of one-dimensional quantum systems may still be performed efficiently by tailored reconstruction schemes. Here, we discuss a scalable method to reconstruct mixed states that are well approximated by matrix product operators. The...

The A(2)Πg ← X(2)Πu electronic transition (4800-6000 Å) of triacetylene cation was measured in an ion trap, where the vibrational and rotational degrees of freedom were equilibrated to 25 K. The rotational profile of the origin band is predicted by a collisional-radiative rate model under conditions expected in diffuse interstellar clouds. Variation in the density of the surrounding gas, rotati...

We implement the proof of principle for the quantum walk of one ion in a linear ion trap. With a single-step fidelity exceeding 0.99, we perform three steps of an asymmetric walk on the line. We clearly reveal the differences to its classical counterpart if we allow the walker or ion to take all classical paths simultaneously. Quantum interferences enforce asymmetric, nonclassical distributions...