Ion beam trap design looks to capture beams of merged cations and anions
DOI: 10.1063/10.0000263
Ion beam trap design looks to capture beams of merged cations and anions lead image
Ion beam trapping between two electrostatic mirrors has emerged as a promising modality for a wide array of disciplines including high-resolution mass spectroscopy and laboratory astrochemistry. Shahi et al. present a design for a hybrid electrostatic ion beam trap (HEIBT) which may provide a new method for studying ion-ion, ion-neutral and ion-laser interactions.
Simulations of the HEIBT set up demonstrate simultaneous trapping of merged cation and anion beams. The team implemented dichroic electrostatic mirrors to allow for selective reflection of an anion beam, while transmitting a cation beam.
The group modeled a benchmark setup optimized for studying mutual neutralization interactions between fluoride anions and difluoride cations. The proposed experiment would trap the anion beam between a first set of mirrors while allowing cations to pass through. The cations would then be reflected and trapped by a second pair of calibrated electrostatic mirrors.
In the central region between mirrors, both beams merge which allows for study of low energy cold collisions by fine control of their relative speed. After optimization, the hypothetical HEIBT achieved collision temperatures comparable to state-of-the-art single-pass alternatives.
These conditions allow for exploration of ion chemistry in planetary and interstellar environments. The system’s high sensitivity and specificity would make analyzing difficult to measure features of reactions, like cross-section and product branching ratios, possible.
Because electrostatic trapping allows high mass selectivity with no mass limit, the benchmark studies on simple ions will pave the way for experiments involving larger, more complex molecules.
The group has begun constructing an experimental device and hopes to test the predictions of the fluorine reactions.
Source: “Hybrid electrostatic ion beam trap (HEIBT): Design and simulation of ion-ion, ion-neutral and ion-laser interactions,” by Abhishek Shahi, Raj Singh, Yonatan Ossia, Daniel Zajfman, Oded Heber, and Daniel Strasser, Review of Scientific Instruments (2019). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5114908 .
