title: Power-law distributions for a trapped ion interacting with a classical buffer gas.
abstract: Classical collisions with an ideal gas generate non-Maxwellian distribution functions for a single ion in a radio frequency ion trap. The distributions have power-law tails whose exponent depends on the ratio of buffer gas to ion mass. This provides a statistical explanation for the previously observed transition from cooling to heating. Monte Carlo results approximate a Tsallis distribution over a wide range of parameters and have ab initio agreement with experiment.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Ralph G
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: DeVoe