Achieving Cold Antiprotons in a Penning Trap

摘要

The current state of proton/electron trapping sensitivity at Washington requires only small numbers (less than or equal to 100) of anti p be trapped in order to achieve high signal to noise ratios. We therefore investigated a anti p trapping scheme based on stopping foils which, in the simplest case, require no auxiliary decelerator/cooler past a LEAR (or equivalent) stage. Cooling of the trapped particles could be accomplished via the damping provided by an external resistor as in all of the other experiments. The rate of this cooling would be rather low, even in the most ideal case, and likely would be much lower when the electrostatic anharmonicity of such a trap is realistically considered. We thereby examined a possible alternate cooling scheme, electron cooling with a buffer gas of cold electrons, in order to improve the cooling rate. 18 references. (ERA citation 09:048640)