Stable voltage source for Penning trap experiments

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Abstract
A voltage reference has been developed to bias ring electrodes of two Penning traps between −90 and 0 V. For output voltages near −90 V, the Allan deviation of the system’s voltage instability is less than 1 part in 108 over all time scales shorter than 104 s. For averaging times longer than several seconds, the system’s stability is determined almost completely by the noise, drift, and aging of the zener diodes in the array of voltage reference integrated circuits. For shorter averaging times, active filters built into the new system significantly reduce the intrinsic noise of the zener diodes. The system makes it possible to continuously adjust the ring voltages for frequency locking the axial motion in the two Penning traps. By keeping electrical noise highly correlated between the two traps, measurement uncertainty should be reduced for precision experiments such as Penning trap mass spectrometry.