Investigation of two-frequency Paul traps for antihydrogen production

Abstract

Radio-frequency (rf) Paul traps operated with multifrequency rf trapping potentials provide the ability to independently confine charged particle species with widely different charge-to-mass ratios. In particular, these traps may find use in the field of antihydrogen recombination, allowing antiproton and positron clouds to be trapped and confined in the same volume without the use of large superconducting magnets. We explore the stability regions of two-frequency Paul traps and perform numerical simulations of small samples of multispecies charged-particle mixtures of up to twelve particles that indicate the promise of these traps for antihydrogen recombination.

Fifteen years of cold matter on the atom chip: promise, realizations, and prospects

“…to cool the charged antiparticle constituents by way of resistive cooling [ 135 ] before recombining them. The nearby surface may also enable efficient multi-species traps as required for this experiment, while the high gradients may allow efficient recombination processes [ 136 ]. One of the challenges concerns the final temperature of the antihydrogen.…”

Two-frequency operation of a Paul trap to optimise confinement of two species of ions

“…Paul traps are used to investigate chemical reactions of ions at low temperatures [37], and two-frequency operation allows much heavier species to be used without a large spatial separation. This application is closely related to the use of two frequencies for the confinement of antimatter where the creation of overlapping clouds of positrons and anti-protons leads to the formation of anti-hydrogen atoms; work towards this is technically challenging goal is ongoing [14] 3 .…”

“…Here we propose an approach motivated by an aspect of electrodynamic trapping -hinted at by Dehmelt in a one-page bulletin on confinement of antimatter [13] -that has received little attention. Dehmelt suggested using electric fields oscillating at two suitably chosen frequencies to simultaneously confine charged particles with different Q/M; this idea has recently been explored further in [14]. We show that the same principle can be used to confine atomic ions and heavier charged molecules.…”

Solid-state magnetic traps and lattices

“…These diagrams can have an intricate structure, see also Ref. [82,83]. Here, we are mainly interested in the prediction of parameter constellations that give rise to stable solutions of Eq.…”