Higher pole linear traps for atomic clock applications

We investigate experimentally and theoretically higher pole linear ion traps for frequency standard use. We have built a 12-pole trap and have successfully loaded ions into it from a linear quadrupole trap. By solving the Boltzmann equation describing large ion clouds where space charge interactions are important we show that clock frequency changes due to ion number fluctuations are much smaller in ion clocks based multipole traps than comparable clocks based on quadrupole linear traps.