We discuss the confinement of an electron in a Penning trap as the realisation of a one-dimensional quantum-mechanical oscillator. In such a situation, the non-zero ground-state energy of the electron in the confining electric and magnetic fields of the trap (as compared to the classical zero of the energy of a free electron) plays a role in certain kinds of investigations, and can be directly measured with high precision in photo-detachment spectroscopy of confined atomic anions such as H − . We detail a concrete implementation of such a measurement and discuss its implications.
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Kumar et al. (2025) studied this question.
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