Ion Trapping.

Why trap ?

Imagine trying to read a book which would fly around in your room, it would almost make it impossible to read it. Atoms and ions move around all the time making it very difficult for physicists to decipher their structure and behavior. A physicist’s ideal dream is to have atoms perfectly at rest. Ion traps are devices which achieve something very close to this. They localize the particle motion within a small region called the trap and ions can be further slowed down by different methods of cooling. This enables us to have a closer look at atoms/ions; we also gain access to powerful means of controlling them.

How it works

Penning traps use a homogeneous axial magnetic field to confine particles radially and a quadrupole electric field to confine the particles axially. The static electric potential can be generated using a set of three electrodes: a ring and two endcaps. In an ideal Penning trap the ring and endcaps are hyperboloids of revolution. The electric field causes ions to oscillate along the trap axis.

Specific applications:

1. Atomic clocks.
2. Frequency standards.
3. Mass spectrometry.

Research areas:

1. Plasma studies.
2. Non-linear Dynamics.
3. Quantum Computations.

(More in future posts)