Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Collisional Cooling and Ordering of Multiply Charged Ions in a Penning Trap

Molecular dynamics simulations are used to help design new experiments by modeling the cooling of small numbers of trapped multiply charged ions by Coulomb interactions with laser-cooled Be{sup +} ions. A Verlet algorithm is used to integrate the equations of motion of two species of point ions interacting in an ideal Penning trap. We use a time step short enough to follow the cyclotron motion of the ions. Axial and radial temperatures for each species are saved periodically. Direct heating and cooling of each species in the simulation can be performed by periodically rescaling velocities. Of interest are Fe{sup 11+} due to a EUV-optical double resonance for imaging and manipulating the ions, and Ca{sup 14+} since a ground state fine structure transition has a convenient wavelength in the tunable laser range