Sensing Electrical Fields in Ion Sources
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• Physics 16, s59
The electrical-field distribution inside a cold-ion cloud has been characterised utilizing Rydberg atoms embedded within the cloud—an method that may very well be harnessed to optimize ion-beam sources.
Targeted ion beams (FIBs) are highly effective instruments for imaging and getting ready supplies, semiconductor circuits, and organic samples. An vital class of FIB sources produces the ions from chilly, trapped impartial atoms—an method that provides excessive brightness and flexibility within the delivered ionic species. The electrical fields produced by the charged ions can degrade the beam high quality and brightness, however characterizing and controlling these fields has confirmed difficult. A brand new technique demonstrated by Alisher Duspayev and Georg Raithel of the College of Michigan, Ann Arbor, holds promise for overcoming this problem [1]. The strategy, based mostly on embedding Rydberg atoms in an ion cloud, affords a noninvasive and versatile approach to probe the electric-field distribution within the cloud below a broad vary of situations.
The thought exploits the pronounced electric-field sensitivity of Rydberg atoms, which have their outermost electron excited right into a high-lying vitality degree the place it is just weakly certain. These atoms exhibit robust so-called Stark results, during which an electrical area produces giant shifts of the atomic spectral traces. Duspayev and Raithel use laser beams to create each ions and Rydberg atoms from rubidium atoms trapped in a cavity. They then characterize the Rydberg spectra with high-precision spectroscopy. Analyzing such spectra, they reconstruct the electrical area produced by the ions contained in the ion supply. Importantly, the duo exhibits that, through the use of two units of rubidium Rydberg states with completely different electron energies and angular momenta, the scheme can probe a broad vary of strengths and distributions of the electrical area skilled by the Rydberg atoms.
Subsequent the duo plans to include the scheme right into a working FIB supply utilizing the derived electric-field data to drive a suggestions loop that optimizes the ion-beam high quality, says Raithel.
–Matteo Rini
Matteo Rini is the Editor of Physics Journal.
References
- A. Duspayev and G. Raithel, “Electrical area evaluation in a cold-ion supply utilizing Stark spectroscopy of Rydberg atoms,” Phys. Rev. Appl. 19, 044051 (2023).
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