Stochastic dynamics of an electron in a Penning trap: phase flips correlated with amplitude collapses and revivals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how noise influences the phase dynamics of electrons in a Penning trap, revealing correlations between phase flips and amplitude collapses, and extending the analysis to electron clouds.

Contribution

It introduces an averaging-based approach to explain phase flips and amplitude collapses, and generalizes the analysis to many-electron systems.

Findings

Correlation between phase jumps and amplitude collapses explained.

Scaling law of phase-jump rate with number of electrons characterized.

Relevance of noise color to phase-switching mechanism discussed.

Abstract

We study the effect of noise on the axial mode of an electron in a Penning trap under parametric-resonance conditions. Our approach, based on the application of averaging techniques to the description of the dynamics, provides an understanding of the random phase flips detected in recent experiments. The observed correlation between the phase jumps and the amplitude collapses is explained. Moreover, we discuss the actual relevance of noise color to the identified phase-switching mechanism. Our approach is then generalized to analyze the persistence of the stochastic phase flips in the dynamics of a cloud of N electrons. In particular, we characterize the detected scaling of the phase-jump rate with the number of electrons.