The Mechanical Paul Trap: Introducing the Concept of Ion Trapping

• Autores: Sebastian Kilde Löfgren, Jonas Enger, Jonathan Weidow, Ricardo Méndez Fragoso
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 61, Nº. 9, 2023, págs. 762-765
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Nobel laureate Wolfgang Paul showed, back in the 1950s, that charged particles can be trapped using alternating electric fields.1 This technique is commonly referred to as a Paul trap or a radiofrequency trap (RF-trap) and is used in various areas of modern physics. This paper presents a 3D-printed mechanical Paul trap, a naive simulation of the system in Python, and student investigations. The files for the 3D-printed trap are available for download and print,2 and the code for the simulation is available to run and tinker with.