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H Dehmelt

Publications and source records attributed to H Dehmelt.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

Paul-Straubel-Kingdon trap for true zero-point confinement of an individual ion and reservoir.

A modification of the Paul-Straubel trap previously described by us may profitably be operated in a Paul-Straubel-Kingdon (PSK) mode during the initial loading of an individual ion into the trap. Thereby the coating of the trap ring electrode by the atomic beam directed upon it in earlier experiments is eliminated, as is the ionization of an already trapped ion. Coating created serious problems as it spot-wise changed the work function of the ring electrode, which caused large, uncontrolled dc fields in the trap center that prevented zero-point confinement. Operating the Paul-Straubel trap with a small negative bias on the ring electrode wire is all that is required to realize the PSK mode. In this mode the tiny ring trap in the center of the long, straight wire section is surrounded by a second trapping well shaped like a long, thin-walled cylindrical shell and extending to the end-caps. There, ions may be conveniently created in this well without danger of coating the ring with barium. In addition, the long second well is useful as a multi-ion reservoir.

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Excitation transfer spectroscopy with two metastable 138Ba+ ions in same trap.

In the absence of lasers approaching trapped ion clock transitions in sharpness we propose to replace the 12.49 m laser field exciting the D3/2-D5/2 transition of the single Ba+ ion A in D3/2 with the near-field of a close by identical ion B in the excited D5/2 state. We tune the frequency of the near-field by the differential Stark shift generated when the center of mass of the tuned ions is slightly moved out of the trap center by a small bias voltage. We demonstrate that the resultant resonant energy exchange can be made considerably faster than the natural lifetime of either metastable level and show how it might be detected.

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Trapped electron cloud bolometer relying on frequency shift.

An improved electron cloud bolometer is analyzed. In this device the cloud temperature is read out not via thermal noise induced by the electrons in a coupled LC circuit but via shift in their axial oscillation frequency in the Penning trap confining them. This shift occurs because as the electron cloud expands with increasing temperature, the average restoring force in the slightly anharmonic trap does change perceptibly. The scheme will be useful in exploring the microwave mode structure of the trap cavity and in locating magnetic field values for which the cavity-induced shift in the measured electron g factor disappears.

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Zero-shift tuning in geonium by variation of trapped charge.

Measuring the g factor, or gyromagnetic ratio of an individual electron or positron permanently confined in ultrahigh vacuum at liquid helium temperature, provides one of the few avenues for testing the currently accepted standard model that views these elementary particles, on the same level as the quarks, as point-like objects without internal structure. Our results, even though their error limits are the smallest ever attained, would still benefit by possibly two orders of magnitude if a shift, estimated at 4 parts in 10(12), caused by interaction of the cyclotron motion with standing electromagnetic waves in the trap cavity confining the electron could be eliminated. Reexamination of experimental data obtained in another connection suggests that it is practical to identify certain critical cyclotron frequency values for that the shift disappears by testing if the cyclotron frequency measured on a cloud of electrons does not vary with the number of electrons it contains. Clouds here must be kept very much smaller than the wavelength of the above standing waves.

Cyclotrons↗

The 31S0-33P0 transition in the aluminum isotope ion 26A1+: a potentially superior passive laser frequency standard and spectrum analyzer.

The aluminum 26 isotope ion is proposed here as a possible candidate for a superior atomic clock. For this even isotope, the extraordinarily long lifetime of the 33P0 state offers a potential clock transition (31S0-33P0) linewidth of 300 microHz. The mF = 0 --> 0 transition has only a quadratic Zeeman shift approximately 4 x 10(-18) at 0.1 Gauss magnetic field, compared to approximately 10(-8) for the hydrogen maser. Electronic quadrupole moments vanish for both J and J' states and with them shifts due to electric field gradients. All shifts have been estimated and are orders of magnitude less than for Hg+ and Ba+, which are being studied as atomic clock elements.

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Monitoring electron spin by running geonium atom as microaccelerator.

Following the classic work of McMillan and of Bohm and Foldy, we have developed a phase equation describing the microsynchrocyclotron acceleration process in geonium. By computer integration of this equation, we are able to confirm that, by making use of the slight relativistic spin dependence of the zero-energy cyclotron frequencies, the acceleration process can be made selective enough to distinguish between spin-up and spin-down states. Quantum effects have been allowed for approximately.

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Practical zero-shift tuning in geonium.

Compositeness of the electron may show up in a very small deviation of the measured electron g factor from one calculated for a point electron by quantum electrodynamics. The precision of our g measurements is currently limited by an interaction of the cyclotron motion with standing waves in the trap cavity containing the electron. The important element introduced here is the systematic exploration of the trap cavity modes and the electron's coupling to them by measuring the shifted electron g factor gc = gc(omega e) as a function of the cyclotron frequency omega e. By measuring gc values at five different omega e values and modeling the trap cavity by six lumped LC circuits, the L values for the four most important modes may be determined and finally the unshifted g value may be extracted. Auxiliary experiments are relied upon only for the L values of the two least critical cavity modes. By designing the trap as a high-Q microwave cavity, an electron cyclotron and anomaly resonance linewidth one or even two orders of magnitude narrower than in free space may be approached without introducing appreciable frequency shifts.

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Geonium "K" experiment using spin dependency of cyclotron frequency supports g data of earlier geonium "S" work.

By substituting the relativistic spin state dependence of the cyclotron frequency for the continuous Stern-Gerlach effect and running the geonium atom as a microsynchrocyclotron accelerator we have detected spin flips of the individual trapped electron. In our initial efforts we have been able to obtain a simple symmetric spin resonance about 4-fold narrower instead of a complex asymmetric one and also to support but not as yet seriously test the result of the earlier geonium "S" work, g/2 = 1. 001 159 652 185 5(40).

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