Space charge and collective oscillation of ion cloud in a linear Paul trap

Abstract

Charged particles confined in an ion trap is still the simplest system to study the effects like anharmonicity, parametric oscillation, bi-stability and in addition space charge induced modification to all the above effects. Some of these effects like space charge induced frequency shift and emergence of collective oscillation has been observed in a linear Paul trap. These results though similar to earlier observations made on a hyperbolic Paul trap, they differ in some finer details which has been addressed in this article. A simplistic model, limited to the adiabatic approximation, has been utilized to support the observation made in the experiment.