We report high-resolution anion photoelectron spectra of thiozonide (S3(-)) acquired by slow electron velocity-map imaging (SEVI). The ions were cryogenically cooled within an ion trap before photodetachment. We measure an electron affinity of 2.3630(9) eV, resolving discrepancies in previously reported photoelectron spectra that resulted from the presence of vibrational hot bands. The SEVI spe...

Polar molecules are desirable systems for quantum simulations and cold chemistry. Molecular ions are easily trapped, but a bias electric field applied to polarize them tends to accelerate them out of the trap. We present a general solution to this issue by rotating the bias field slowly enough for the molecular polarization axis to follow but rapidly enough for the ions to stay trapped. We demo...

The formation of (40)Ca(2)(+) molecular ions is observed in a hybrid (40)Ca magneto-optical and ion trap system. The molecular ion formation process is determined to be photo-associative ionization of ultracold (40)Ca atoms. A lower bound for the two-body rate constant is found to be beta ≥ 2 ± 1 × 10(-15) cm(3) Hz. Ab initio molecular potential curves are calculated for the neutral Ca(2) and i...

Novel instrumentation has been developed which allows for the sequential injection and subsequent reaction of oppositely-charged ions generated via electrospray ionization (ESI) in a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer. The instrument uses a DC turning quadrupole to sequentially direct the two ion polarities into the ion trap from ESI sources which are situated 90 degrees from the axial (z) d...

We measure and characterize anomalous motional heating of an atomic ion confined in the lowest quantum levels of a novel rf ion trap that features moveable electrodes. The scaling of heating with electrode proximity is measured, and when the electrodes are cooled from 300 to 150 K, the heating rate is suppressed by an order of magnitude. This provides direct evidence that anomalous motional hea...

Single ions held in linear Paul traps are promising candidates for a future quantum computer. Here, we discuss a two-layer microstructured segmented linear ion trap. The radial and axial potentials are obtained from numeric field simulations and the geometry of the trap is optimized. As the trap electrodes are segmented in the axial direction, the trap allows the transport of ions between diffe...

Linear ion traps are finding new applications in many areas of mass spectrometry. In a linear ion trap, ions are confined radially by a two-dimensional (2D) radio frequency (RF) field, and axially by stopping potentials applied to end electrodes. This review focuses on linear ion trap instrumentation. Potentials and ion motion in linear multipole fields and methods of ion trapping, cooling, exc...

Using a segmented ion trap with mK laser-cooled ions we have realised a novel single ion source which can deterministically deliver a wide range of ion species, isotopes or ionic molecules [Schnitzler et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 070501 (2009)]. Experimental data is discussed in detail and compared with numerical simulations of ion trajectories. For the novel ion source we investigate numerica...