Spin-up of an electron plasma - First results

The application of a rotating electric quadrupole field to a pure electron plasma confined in an elongated Penning trap of the Malmberg type operating at 1 Tesla is shown to produce an unusually long-lived state. The observations are consistent with an assumption that the rotating field suppresses the radial expansion from transport due to alignment imperfections that normally limits the lifetime of such a plasma to a few thousand seconds. With the rotating field in operation, a lifetime of 20 hours was obtained