What is EBIT

An Electron Beam Ion Trap, or EBIT, is a device that makes and traps very highly charged ions by means of a high current density electron beam. The EBIT was developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by Mort Levine and Ross Marrs. Here is an LLNL artist's concept of the EBIT. With this device we perform a wide range of physics experiments. The ions can either be observed in the trap itself or extracted from the trap for external experiments.

We produced bare uranium (U⁹²⁺) in the lab using Super-EBIT (a high energy modification to the origional EBIT). This was the first time this feat has been accomplished without the use of high-energy particle accelerators.

EBIT is still the only ion source in the world that can create ions up to U⁹²⁺ that are practically at rest. All other sources of highly charged ions involve accelerators that accelerate the ions to very high energies. Therefore EBIT allows us to study an otherwise inaccessible domain in which the potential energy of the ion is comparable to or exceeds its kinetic energy.

EBIT is an idea based upon the Electron Beam Ion Source (EBIS), a design for an ion source intended for use in atomic physics and as an injector into heavy-ion accelerators. Other EBITs, most of which are directly based on the Livermore design, exist at NIST in Gaithersburg, MD., Oxford (England), Berlin and Heidelberg (Germany), and Tokyo (Japan).

Experiments with highly charged ions are in the forefront of physics research in several areas today. These ions are used for studies in the areas of atomic, nuclear, plasma, astro and surface physics.

How EBIT works

EBIT consists of a high-current-density electron beam (up to 5000 A/cm²) passing through a series of three drift tubes. Ions are trapped radially by the charge of the electron beam itself, and axially by voltages applied to the end drift tubes. The magnetic field helps with the confinement.

The electron beam is magnetically compressed by a high magnetic field from a pair of superconducting Helmholtz coils. The electron beam energy in the trap is determined by the voltage applied to the central drift tube.

As electrons collide with the ions in the beam, they strip off electrons until the energy required to remove the next electron is higher than the beam energy. Our original EBIT is capable of an electron beam energy of about 30 keV, enough to make neon-like uranium (U⁸²⁺, or a uranium atom with only 10 of the usual 92 electrons). From this EBIT-I, we have built a high-energy EBIT, named SuperEBIT, with a floating electron gun, that can achieve an electron beam energy of 200 keV, enough to make bare uranium (U⁹²⁺). Because of the richness of the research field, a second low-energy device (EBIT-II) was built at Livermore.

Electron-Ion Interaction Research

X-Ray Spectroscopy

LLNL staff:
 

Peter Beiersdorfer (Ph. D.: Princeton University)

Hui Chen (Ph. D.: Imperial College, London)

Melisa Marion** (Diablo Valley College)

Mark May (Ph.D.: Johns Hopkins University)

Daniel Thorn** (U.C. Berkeley)

Elmar Träbert (Ph. D.: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany)

Student Participating Guests (click here to become one! ):
 

Alex Graf – University of California, Davis, California

Eddie Red – Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida

Ainsley Smith – Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia

* Graduate student employee (click here to become one! )
** Undergraduate student employee (click here to become one! )

Participating Guests and Collaborators (click here to become one! ):
 

Kevin R. Boyce – Goddard Space Flight Center

Gregory V. Brown – Goddard Space Flight Center

Eugène J. Clothiaux – Auburn University, Alabama

Eckhart Förster – Friedrich-Schiller-Universität , Jena., Germany

Keith C. Gendreau – Goddard Space Flight Center

John Gygax – Goddard Space Flight Center

Clifford L. Harris – University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada

Steven M. Kahn – Columbia University, New York, NY

Paul A. Neill – University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada

Eric H. Pinnington – University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

F. Scott Porter – Goddard Space Flight Center

Daniel W. Savin – Columbia University, New York, NY

Lutz Schweikhard – Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany

Augustine J. Smith – Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia

Jeffrey Thompson – University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada

Steven B. Utter – Spectra Physics, Mountain View, California

Charles Weatherford – Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida