Lost ion detection and reloading

If the ion is lost during a scan, the last two data points collected are thrown out, the scan is paused, and the load_ion experiment is scheduled. After the load_ion experiment completes, the scan is resumed two scan points before the point at which it failed. This feature must be selectively enabled in the scan by setting

self.enable_reloading = True

in the scan.

Lost Ion Re-Loading

Ion’s can be automatically loaded by creating a sub-component similar to the loading sub-component in examples/loading.py In that sub-component, presence of an ion is determined by thresholding PMT counts and loading will stop after a given number of seconds if an ion could not be loaded.

Note

To use lost ion detection and automatic reloading, inherit from the ReloadingScan class, create a loading library that implements the LoadingInterface interface, and set self.loading to an instance of the loading library in the scan:

self.loading = Loading(self)

During a scan, the data collected for each scan point is analyzed by functions provided by the ReloadingScan class to determine if an ion is still present in the trap. This preliminary analysis state looks for the presence or absence of an ion by thresholding PMT counts returned by the scan’s measure() method. If more than two successive scan points fail this analysis stage, a separate measurement is performed by the ion_present() method of the loading sub-component to determine if the ion is present (typically by also thresholding PMT counts). The ion is considered to be lost if this final stage fails (ion_present() returns False). When the ion is considered lost, the scan will be paused, and a new ion will be loaded by calling the schedule_load_ion() method of the loading sub-component. If loading succeeds, the scan will resume at two scan points prior to the point that originally failed ion detection.