A Brief Presentation of Lanzhou Penning Trap Control System

LPT （Lanzhou Penning Trap） is an ion-trap facility in Lanzhou, China. As ions can be cooled to an extremely small phase space and can be stored for a very long time, ion traps are a perfect instrument for high precision mass measurements. A system with specialized electronics for LPT is under construction now. This system could be used for voltage and timing control to make ions moving in a special mode, and the data acquisition and analysis online/offline could be achieved in the mean time. The requirements of control system, the distribution of hardware, the overview of software, and the latest progress of LPTCtrlSys （Lanzhou Penning Trap Control System） are presented.

Loading Detection and Number Estimation of an Electron Plasma in a Penning Trap

A quadrupole Penning trap for spectroscopy and investigations of non-neutral plasmas was designed and built. In this work we provide details of the trap design and a discussion of a simple design and procedure for convenient electron loading from an aligned filament. Electrons from thermionic emission which form a low-energy diffuse beam are trapped in weak magnetic fields. They are detected through a non-destructive electronic detection scheme, the details of which are discussed. The detection signal is diminished when the electron beam energy is increased while the electron flux is kept constant. This is explained by considering the energy shift in the distribution function of electrons emitted from the filament and entering the trap. We present a calculation of the number of trapped electrons from the shape of the detection signal. This calculation, based on a model of a driven damped harmonic oscillator to describe the axial motion of the electrons, compares favourably with the numbers obtained by measurements of the space charge induced shift in the trap potential.

The optimal design of a 7 T highly homogeneous superconducting magnet for a Penning trap

A Penning trap system called Lanzhou Penning Trap（LPT） is now being developed for precise mass measurements at the Institute of Modern Physics（IMP）.One of the key components is a 7 T actively shielded superconducting magnet with a clear warm bore of 156 mm.The required field homogeneity is 3 × 10-7 over two 1 cubic centimeter volumes lying 220 mm apart along the magnet axis.We introduce a two-step method which combines linear programming and a nonlinear optimization algorithm for designing the multi-section superconducting magnet.This method is fast and flexible for handling arbitrary shaped homogeneous volumes and coils.With the help of this method an optimal design for the LPT superconducting magnet has been obtained.

Design of an asymmetric superconducting magnet for a Penning trap

A new 7.0 T asymmetric active shield superconducting magnet for Penning traps is proposed in this work. The magnet has two field regions whose homogeneity is better than 0.5 ppm. Linear and nonlinear methods are used for the asymmetric electromagnetic optimization. Stress analysis, mechanical design and a quench protection system design are also introduced in this paper.

Simulation of the Lanzhou Penning Trap LPT

The LPT (Lanzhou Penning Trap) is under construction and its task is to perform direct mass measurement of fusion-evaporation residues and if possible for heavy isotopes. Detailed simulations have been done for a good understanding to the ion’s movement and mechanics in the trap. The optimization of the LPT is also performed based on the simulation. With a scale of 0.5 mm per grid used in the simulation and many other limitations a highest mass resolution has been achieved to be 1.9×10-5. An unexpected behaviour in the simulation related to magnetron motion has been found.

Electron bunching in a Penning trap and accelerating process for CO_2 gas mixture active medium

In PASER （particle acceleration by stimulated emission of radiation）, in the presence of an active medium incorporated in a Penning trap, moving electrons can become bunched, and as they get enough energy, they escape the trap forming an optical injector. These bunched electrons can enter the next PASER section filled with the same active medium to be accelerated. In this paper, electron dynamics in the presence of a gas mixture active medium incorporated in a Penning trap is analyzed by developing an idealized 1D model. We evaluate the energy exchange occurring as the train of electrons traverses into the next PASER section. The results show that the oscillating electrons can be bunched at the resonant frequency of the active medium. The influence of the trapped time and population inversion are analyzed, showing that the longer the electrons are trapped, the more energy from the medium the accelerated electrons get, and with the increase of population inversion, the decelerated electrons are virtually unchanged but the accelerated electrons more than double their peak energy values. The simulation results show that the gas active medium needs a lower population inversion to bunch the electrons compared to a solid active medium, so the experimental conditions can easily be achieved.