Current Stage of the Project

A Fortran 90 simulation running on a DEC alpha cluster yields results which appear to agree with theory. The graphs below depict the motion of an ion within a (simulated) Paul trap. According to the Mathieu differential equation , an ion should stay in the trap only when the simulation parameters correspond to "stability regions." The experimental conditions are within a "stability region," and, as evidenced by the plots below, the ion is trapped!


left: radial and axial position as a function of time
right: radial position vs. axial position
A complete High-Performance Fortran (HPF) compiler is not yet available. However, it seems reasonable to expect one within the next four to five months, at which point this application will be ported to HPF with hopes of speeding up the simulation and testing the suitability of HPF for computationally intense applications.
Click here for a postscript (.ps) write-up of the project (9Mbytes)...
Click here for an .htm write-up of the project (no pictures)...
Susan L. Fischer
Physics Department
Davidson College, North Carolina
e-mail: sfisher@phyhost.davidson.edu