Resistive cooling circuits for charged particle traps using crystal resonators

The paper addresses a novel method to couple a signal from charged particles in a Penning trap to a high Q resonant circuit using a crystal resonator. Traditionally the trap capacity is converted into a resonator by means of an inductance. When normal conducting wires (e.g. copper) are applied to build up a coil, the unloaded Q value is limited to a value in the order of 1000. The tuned circuit’s Q factor is directly linked to the input impedance “seen” by the trapped particles at resonance frequency. This parallel resonance impedance is a measure of the efficiency of resistive cooling and thus it should be optimized. We propose here a commercially available crystal resonator since it exhibits a very high Q value and a parallel resonance impedance of several MOhm. The possibility to tune the parallel resonance frequency of the quartz results in filter behavior that allows covering a broad range of frequencies.