I What does it mean to "drive a particle" in a penning trap?

[joegibs]

http://depts.washington.edu/uwptms/research.html
In a penning trap where they use sideband detection of the particle, they need to "drive" it. But what does that mean? Is the position of the particle detected anywhere along this process?

 

[PeterDonis]

This appears to be a detailed review of both classical and quantum mechanical models of a single charged particle in a Penning trap:

http://gabrielse.physics.harvard.edu/gabrielse/papers/1986/Review.pdf

From what I can gather from this paper, no position measurements are made on the particle in the trap.

 

[joegibs]

This appears to be a detailed review of both classical and quantum mechanical models of a single charged particle in a Penning trap:

http://gabrielse.physics.harvard.edu/gabrielse/papers/1986/Review.pdf

From what I can gather from this paper, no position measurements are made on the particle in the trap.

You read that whole paper?
But what does it mean to "drive" a particle? That's the part I really don't understand

 

[Nugatory]

But what does it mean to "drive" a particle? That's the part I really don't understand

You apply an oscillating electromagnetic field to it. There's a fair amount of discussion starting around page 253 in the paper that PeterDonis linked.