Ion trapping at Lab to Life 2026

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:02]An ion is an it's an individual atom that has had one electron removed from it.

[00:00:07]So, it's charged. And this means that uh if we find electric field to it, that moves the ion around.

[00:00:14]And in the lab, an electric field we can apply which causes an energy to swing.

[00:00:19]It looks a bit like this like this sort of saddle.

[00:00:23]And this is what we call an electromagnetic potential.

[00:00:27]And you can see that if we try and put our I think I forgot my ion here.

[00:00:32]It just rolls out. It doesn't stay where it doesn't stay where we want it to.

[00:00:36]So, what you can do is we can rotate rotate it not just rotate it in time.

[00:00:43]And it's a potential we're rotating.

[00:00:45]Then we put the ion in that place somewhere somewhere in the field. If you get this frequency of rotation right, you know, the speed of the rotation exactly right, then the then the ion will stay there.

[00:00:58]And we can make it stay there for weeks and months.