Electron Cooling of Highly Charged Ions in Penning Traps
- Institut fuer Theoretische Physik, Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg, Staudtstr. 7, D - 91058 Erlangen (Germany)
For recent and planned experiments like the CPT-tests with antihydrogen at CERN (ATHENA, ATRAP) or the QED-tests and various other investigations with slow highly charged ions at GSI (HTTRAP), the ions or antiprotons are cooled with electrons or positrons in Penning traps. In many of these applications an efficient and fast cooling is crucial. In particular for electron cooling of highly charged ions, like e.g. of U92+ in HITRAP, sufficiently large cooling rates are mandatory for avoiding too much losses by recombination or charge exchange processes. Here we present calculations of electron cooling and recombination losses of an ensemble of ions in a Penning traps based on a detailed description of the cooling force and the actual radiative ion-electron recombination rate. We focus on the cooling of highly charged ions, namely bare Uranium, in HITRAP. Both the associated cooling times and recombination losses strongly depend on the density of the electrons and the ratio of the number of ions to the number of electrons in the trap. Our analysis shows that electron cooling of bare Uranium with an initial energy of a few keV/u is feasible with a cooling time less than about a second at less than 10 percent recombination losses.
- OSTI ID:
- 20891696
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 862, Issue 1; Conference: Non-neutral plasma physics VI: Workshop on non-neutral plasmas 2006, Aarhus (Denmark), 25-29 Jun 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2387934; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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