Storing ions for collision studies

A static trap capable of storing ions for many hours—electrons for over a month—bids fair to bring the convenience of the chemist's reagent shelf to the study of ions and their interactions. The trap to store heavy ions developed at the Joint Institute of Laboratory Astrophysics, shown on the cover and in figure 1, is preferable for our work to its older cousin, the radiofrequency trap, in that it does not feed energy into the system it contains. Its usefulness is further enhanced by a nondestructive detection technique. Thus ends the era when our knowledge of ions and their interactions depended exclusively on analysis of plasmas, laboratory and natural, or the cleaner method of colliding beams.