Capture and isolation of highly charged ions in a unitary Penning trap

Abstract

We recently used a compact Penning trap to capture and isolate highly-charged ions extracted from an electron beam ion trap (EBIT) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Isolated charge states of highly-stripped argon and neon ions with total charge $Q \geq 10$, extracted at energies of up to $4\times 10^3\,Q$ eV, are captured in a trap with well depths of $\,\approx (4\, {\rm to}\, 12)\,Q$ eV. Here we discuss in detail the process to optimize velocity-tuning, capture, and storage of highly-charged ions in a unitary Penning trap designed to provide easy radial access for atomic or laser beams in charge exchange or spectroscopic experiments, such as those of interest for proposed studies of one-electron ions in Rydberg states or optical transitions of metastable states in multiply-charged ions. Under near-optimal conditions, ions captured and isolated in such rare-earth Penning traps can be characterized by an initial energy distribution that is $\approx$ 60 times narrower than typically found in an EBIT. This reduction in thermal energy is obtained passively, without the application of any active cooling scheme in the ion-capture trap.