I have taken images of the He-Ne laser beam at different positions from the laser using a CCD camera. These images are then used for image processing in Python and LabVIEW and found the laser beam width at different locations and minimized errors using various averaging techniques. This will be helpful later in characterizing the ECDL.
Numerically simulate the ion trap potentials in Ansys Electronics software and calculate the required DC voltages to be given to each segment of the DC blade and the required RF voltage and frequency for the RF blade so that the ions are trapped in radial and axial directions
A segmented blade Paul trap will be used for trapping the ions. The mechanical design is made
in Autodesk Inventor software (Figure 1 & 2). This comprises four blades (two DC blades and two RF blades). Each blade is segmented into 5 parts along the trap axis. Ions can be confined along the trap axis by giving different DC voltages to each segment of the DC blade. Two RF blades will be driven at some RF voltage to radially confine the ions.