Structure of Multi-Species Charged-Particles with Competing Interactions in a Quadratic Trap

Multi-species charged-particles interacting with each other by a competing short-range attraction and long-range repulsion potential confined in a quadratic trap are studied with molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that particles with similar mass-to-charge ratio tend to populate a common shell, whose location depends on the particle mass-to-charge ratio, and that the greater the latter is, the closer the particles to the centre of the trap are. This rule for the ground-state configuration is independent of the total particle and species numbers in the system.