Description
As part of the APEX collaboration (An Electron Positron eXperiment) this work supports the experimental results obtained with pure electron plasmas in a levitated dipole trap using two distinct computational methods. The levitated dipole trap confines electrons on closed, purely poloidal magnetic field lines around a superconducting coil that is floating in a vacuum chamber due to external magnetic fields. In combination with positrons coming from NEPOMUC (NEutron induced POsitron source MUnich) this trap will ultimately confine a first of its kind, non-relativistic pair plasma. First measurements of the local space charge potentials are used to reconstruct the electron density distribution assuming a local thermal equilibrium along magnetic field lines and solving the Poisson-Boltzmann equation. In addition, simulations of the dynamics in the dipole trap are under development, in particular the so called diocotron mode which is well known in the context of Penning-Malmberg traps.