Investigation of Ne and He Buffer Gases Cooled Ar + Ion Clouds in a Paul Ion Trap

In this article, we examine the influences of Ne and He buffer gases under confined Ar + ion cloud in a homemade Paul ion trap in various pressures and confinement times. The trap is of small size (r0 = 1 cm) operating in a radio frequency (rf) voltage only mode, and has limited accuracy of 13 V. The electron impact and ionization process take place inside the trap and a Faraday cup has been used for the detection. Although the experimental results show that the Ar + ion FWHM with Ne buffer gas is wider than the He buffer gas at the same pressure (1×10 -1 mbar) and confinement time is about 1000 µs, nevertheless, a faster cooling was found with He buffer gas with 500 µs. ultimetly, the obtanied results performed an average cloud tempertures reduced from 1777 K to 448.3 K for Ne (1000 µs) and from 1787.9 K to 469.4 K for He (500 µs)