Penning Trap to Study Stored Ions in Laser Fields

We are currently setting up an experiment which features a dedicated Penning trap for the preparation of well-defined ion targets and the investigation of their reaction with high-intensity lasers.

Due to various trap-specific techniques, a clean ion target can be prepared under well-defined conditions with respect to the ion species, size, shape, density and location. Following reactions with a high-intensity laser, charged reaction products can be detected non-destructively and remain stored for further investigations. One interesting field for such a device is the study of multi-photon ionization and related non-linear effects in extreme laser fields. The setup is designed to be as portable as possible such that it can be client to various laser facilities such as FLASH, PHELIX, JETI or POLARIS.