Electrode is a toolkit to develop and analyze RF ion traps. It can optimize 2D surface electrode patterns to achieve desired trapping properties and extract relevant parameters of the resulting geometry. The software also treats precomputed 3D volumetric field and potential data transparently.

Quick overview and tutorial: http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/nist-ionstorage/electrode/blob/master/examples/tutorial.ipynb

See also:

[1] Roman Schmied <roman.schmied@unibas.ch>, SurfacePattern software package. http://atom.physik.unibas.ch/people/romanschmied/code/SurfacePattern.php

[2] Roman Schmied: Electrostatics of gapped and finite surface electrodes. New Journal of Physics 12:023038 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/12/2/023038

[3] Roman Schmied, Janus H. Wesenberg, and Dietrich Leibfried: Optimal Surface-Electrode Trap Lattices for Quantum Simulation with Trapped Ions. Physical Review Letters 102:233002 (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.233002

[4] A. van Oosterom and J. Strackee: The Solid Angle of a Plane Triangle, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. BME-30, no. 2, pp. 125-126. (1983) http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TBME.1983.325207

[5] Mário H. Oliveira and José A. Miranda: Biot–Savart-like law in electrostatics. European Journal of Physics 22:31 (2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0143-0807/22/1/304

# apt-get install python-cvxopt python-numpy python-matplotlib python-scipy python-traits python-shapely

to use the ipython based notebooks, try

# apt-get install ipython-notebook

The tutorial contains two examples of surface electrode traps (five_wire and threefold). The relevant code can be all pasted into a Python script (five_wire.py) or IPython notebook (see below) and executed.

Use e.g.:

$ PYTHONPATH=. python your_script.py

to run a script without instaling the electrode package.

# python setup.py develop

installs the package into your python tree such that it can be imported from any script anywhere on your system. It only creates links from your python tree to this development tree and changes in the package immediately become visible.

# python setup.py install

installs the package in your python tree by copying and compiling the files. After this, changes to the package files in this development tree become only visible if you install the package again.

Ensure you have ipython > 0.11 with ipython notebook installed, then run

$ ipython notebook --pylab=inline --notebook-dir=examples --script