SAXENA AND SHAH: PLASMA DYNAMICS IN A DUAL-FREQUENCY PAUL TRAP USING TSALLIS DISTRIBUTION 475
Plasma Dynamics in a Dual-Frequency Paul Trap
Using Tsallis Distribution
Submission by : Anmol Sinha, ECE
Abstract—This paper theoretically analyzes the motion of a
collection of charged particles in a dual-frequency Paul trap. We
derive analytical expressions for the single particle trajectory and
the plasma distribution function assuming Tsallis statistics to see
how this trap configuration is different from a conventional Paul
trap. The introduction of a secondary RF frequency in a dual-
frequency Paul trap allows for a modification of the spatial extent
of confinement of charged particles. The plasma distribution
function and temperature have been found to be periodic if the
two driving frequencies are rationally related and the resulting
period of plasma oscillation is given by the LCM of the time
periods corresponding to the two driving frequencies and their
linear combinations. The plasma temperature is spatially varying
and the time-averaged plasma distribution has been found to be
double humped beyond a certain spatial threshold, indicating the
presence of certain instabilities. The effect of dual frequency in
a Paul trap on the energy level shifts of the atomic orbitals has
been investigated and the uncertainties in second order Doppler
and Stark shift are found to be of the same order as that of a
single-frequency Paul trap.
Index Terms—Nonlinearities, plasma heating, temperature
measurement, time varying systems.
I. INTRODUCTION
E ARNSHAW’S theorem states that it is not possible to
confine charged particles using only electrostatic fields,
since there is neither minima nor maxima of the potential
in free space but only saddle points. However, Paul [1] and
Dehmelt [49] were able to show that if oscillatory electric
fields were used, it would be possible to spatially localize the
charged particle by what is known as the ponderomotive effect.
Paul trap [1], [2] is a device used to confine charged particles
for a long duration of time in a perturbation-free environment
using spatially nonuniform time-periodic electric fields. Since
its conceptualization, Paul trap has found application in diverse
fields such as mass spectroscopy [3], biological sciences [4],
coulombic crystal formation [5], and quantum information
processing [6]. In a conventional Paul trap, a charged particle
is trapped by applying a combination of dc and RF voltages at
Manuscript received August 7, 2017; revised October 18, 2017, November
22, 2017, and December 16, 2017; accepted February 4, 2018. Date of
publication February 19, 2018; date of current version March 8, 2018.
The review of this paper was arranged by Senior Editor S. J. Gitomer.
(Corresponding author: Varun Saxena.)
V. Saxena is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian In-
stitute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail: sax-
ena15varun@gmail.com).
K. Shah is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal 462066,
India (e-mail: kushals@iiserb.ac.in).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPS.2018.2803799
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html
1
a single frequency to the trap electrodes. The device has a ring
electrode with a hyperbolic area of cross section which lies in
the xy plane. To confine the particles, the potential is applied
to these rings and end cap electrodes placed along the z-axis.
The motion of charged particles along one of the dimensions
in such a trap is given by the well-known Mathieu equation
[7]
d2 x
+ (A − 2B cos(ωt)) = 0 (1)
dt2
where the coefficients A and B are related to the applied dc
and RF voltages, respectively, and ω is the RF frequency.
The motion of a particle governed by the above equation is a
superposition of a slow secular motion with frequency ν ω and
a fast micromotion with frequency ω. In this paper, we focus
our attention on a generalization of the single-frequency Paul
trap where the RF voltage has two frequencies instead of one.
In this case, the equation of motion of the charged particles
is given by
d2 x
+ (A − 2B1 cos(ω1 t) − 2B cos(ω2 t))x = 0 (2)
dt2
where the coefficients B1 and B2 are related to the voltages
operating at different RF frequencies ω1 and ω2, respectively,
along with a dc voltage related to the coefficient, A. The
voltage at the second RF frequency can either be applied delib-
erately or may get generated due to trap imperfections. Such
dual frequency traps have found application in trapping more
than one type of charged particle [8], with specific interest in
trapping of particles with varying charge-to-mass ratio. This
has also prompted interest in trapping both matter as well
as antimatter in a small region inside the Paul trap [9]and the
method to do so has been well described in a recent work [10]
. Collisionless plasma heating has also gained considerable
attention in dual frequency capacitive discharges [11]-[14].
The dual-frequency Paul trap is usually used to confine
two different charged particle species. However, it is also of
interest to see how the particle dynamics in a dual frequency
trap differs from that of a single frequency trap even for a
single charged-particle species, which is our primary objective.
In this paper, we discuss how spatial confinement can be
controlled in a dual-frequency Paul trap and this will perhaps
expand the experimental
framework
for more of such traps.
information.
SAXENA AND SHAH: PLASMA DYNAMICS IN A DUAL-FREQUENCY PAUL TRAP USING TSALLIS DISTRIBUTION
The time periodic distribution function in a dual trap is
also found to be qualitatively different from that obtained in a
single-frequency Paul trap and might lead to different stability
properties. Hence, our focus in this paper is, therefore, to
analyze the dynamics of charged particles of a single species in
this newly proposed dual trap to highlight its distinct features
in order to encourage further research in this direction.
Plasmas can display interesting collective properties even
in the absence of collisions. In order to see many of these
properties, we need to consider the self-consistent electric
fields generated due to the plasma itself, which is actually
a very complex problem and mathematically very challeng-
ing.Hence, solving the Vlasov equation while neglecting the
self- consistent field is a useful starting point to mathematically
address the full self-consistent problem.
We derive the approximate analytical expression for the
time evolution of the position and velocity of the particle
using the modified Lindstedt–Poincare (MLP) perturbation
method [15], [16]. Since the collective dynamics of charged
particles is of particular interest to us, in Section III, we us
an initial distribution of the form of q-Gaussian Tsallis dis-
tribution function to construct a time evolution of distribution
function, P(x,v,t). The Tsallis distribution [17] is a probabil-
ity distribution that emerges out of the maximization of Tsallis
entropy through a number called Tsallis parameter, q. This

parameter q represents the deviation from an entirely extensive
entropy. When q 1, the extensive character emerges. There
are different forms of Tsallis distributions, for example, q-
Gaussian, q-exponential, and q-Weibull. This distribution has
been used in many fields of sciences like anatomy [18],
astrology [19], machine learning [20], and economics [21].
When long range interactions, i.e., Coulomb force, come into
play, the entropy of the system does not remain dependent
on the size of the system and, therefore, the system becomes
non extensive. In this paper, we use q-Gaussian form of
Tsallis distribution. It represents a generalization of Gaussian
distribution much like the Tsallis entropy is the generalization
of Boltzmann–Gibbs entropy.
Tsallis distribution has been employed in a conventional
Paul trap to study the distribution of barium ions cooled in a
classic buffer gas [22], where it has been shown that classic
collisions of an ion with a buffer gas result in the distributions
functions that does not follow the Maxwellian Statistics. Using
a combination of Monte Carlo simulations and analytical
methods, it has been shown that the distribution function
acquires a power tail instead of an exponential Gaussian tail.
The energy distribution of ultracold atomic ions in Paul trap
has also been found to fit better with Tsallis distribution when
compared to the Maxwellian distribution in [23]. Here, the
dynamics of a single ground-state cooled ion during spiraling
Langevin collisions with ultracold atoms were inves- tigated
and the ion’s energy distribution was characterized by a
power-law tail indicative of Tsallis rather than Maxwellian
distribution. Moreover, Tsallis distribution has been used to
theoretically analyze the plasma dynamics in Paul traps as the
distribution function is known to exhibit a power tail [24].
Some other works where power tail distributions emerge have
also used Tsallis distribution [25]-[27].
2
475
The q-Gaussian Tsallis distribution in its initial form is
given by
√
β 1
P0 (x0 , v0 ) = [1 − (1 − q)βY (x0 , y0 )] (1−q) (3)
cq
where Y (x0 ,v0 ) is any arbitrary function of (x0 ,v0 ) in general,
q is the Tsallis parameter, β is an arbitrary constant, and Cq
is a normalization factor given by
√ (3−q)
πΓ( 2(q−1) )
Cq = p (4)
1
(q − 1)Γ( (q−1) )
for 1 < q < 3. The q-Gaussian distribution function has a finite
support for q < 1 and has an undefined variance for 2 ≤ q <
3. Hence, these two regimes are unsuitable for our analysis.
Moreover, the q-Gaussian distribution has a finite variance for
1 < q < (5/3) and an infinite variance for (5/3) < q < 2.
The variance is an important quantity as it is a measure of
the plasma temperature. Since the space and velocities of the
charged particles are finite in any practical setting, we will

only work in the regime where the variance comes out to be
finite. As q 5/3, the distribution needs to be integrated over
a very large range of velocities in order to get the correct value
of variance. In practical settings, the particle velocities cannot
have arbitrarily high values, therefore in this paper, we focus
only on values of q ∈ (1, 1.4) so that sufficiently accurate
values of the variance can be obtained.
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