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arXiv:1703.05089

Localization of ions within one-, two- and three-dimensional Coulomb crystals by a standing wave optical potential

T. Lauprêtre, Rasmus B. Linnet, Ian D. Leroux, Aurélien Dantan, Michael Drewsen

Published Mar 15, 2017• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We demonstrate light-induced localization of Coulomb-interacting particles in multi-dimensional structures. Subwavelength localization of ions within small multi-dimensional Coulomb crystals by an intracavity optical standing wave field is evidenced by measuring the difference in scattering inside symmetrically red- and blue-detuned optical lattices and is observed even for ions undergoing substantial radial micromotion. These results are promising steps towards the structural control of ion Coulomb crystals by optical fields as well as for complex many-body simulations with ion crystals or for the investigation of heat transfer at the nanoscale, and have potential applications for ion-based cavity quantum electrodynamics, cavity optomechanics and ultracold ion chemistry.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1703.05089

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We demonstrate light-induced localization of Coulomb-interacting particles in multi-dimensional structures. Subwavelength localization of ions within small multi-dimensional Coulomb crystals by an intracavity optical standing wave field is evidenced by measuring the difference in scattering inside symmetrically red- and blue-detuned optical lattices and is observed even for ions undergoing substantial radial micromotion. These results are promising steps towards the structural control of ion Coulomb crystals by optical fields as well as for complex many-body simulations with ion crystals or for the investigation of heat transfer at the nanoscale, and have potential applications for ion-based cavity quantum electrodynamics, cavity optomechanics and ultracold ion chemistry.
Light-induced control of ions within small Coulomb crystals is investigated. By intense intracavity optical standing-wave fields, subwavelength localization of individual ions is achieved for one-, two-, and three-dimensional crystals. Based on these findings, we illustrate numerically how the application of such optical potentials can be used to tailor the normal-mode spectra and patterns of multidimensional Coulomb crystals. The results represent, among others, important steps towards controlling the crystalline structure of Coulomb crystals, investigating heat-transfer processes at the quantum limit, and quantum simulations of many-body systems.
Coulomb crystallisation of laser-cooled ensembles of ions in harmonic traps has been studied experimentally with many spectacular results in recent years. It is well known that for sufficiently large numbers of ions the ground state of a Coulomb crystal in such a system has a body-centred cubic (bcc) structure. However, in experiments with crystals of up to a few 104 ions, structural transitions between bcc and, for example, face centred cubic (fee) or hexagonal close packed (hep) structures are observed. For constant ion densities, the lattice spacing of the planes of highest density differs only by about 3% between bcc and fee structures and simulations predict very small energy differences, thus thermal effects even at temperatures in the mK regime are sufficient to excite these transitions. Here we study numerically the possibility of controlling and switching the crystal structure with the help of periodic potentials generated by the dipole forces of standing-wave light fields.
The electronic and motional degrees of freedom of trapped ions can be controlled and coherently coupled on the level of individual quanta.Assembling complex quantum systems ion by ion while keeping this unique level of control remains a challenging task.For many applications, linear chains of ions in conventional traps are ideally suited to address this problem.However, driven motion due to the magnetic or radio-frequency electric trapping fields sometimes limits the performance in one dimension and severely affects the extension to higher-dimensional systems.Here, we report on the trapping of multiple barium ions in a single-beam optical dipole trap without radio-frequency or additional magnetic fields.We study the persistence of order in ensembles of up to six ions within the optical trap, measure their temperature, and conclude that the ions form a linear chain, commonly called a one-dimensional Coulomb crystal.As a proof-of-concept demonstration, we access the collective motion and perform spectrometry of the normal modes in the optical trap.Our system provides a platform that is free of driven motion and combines advantages of optical trapping, such as state-dependent confinement and nanoscale potentials, with the desirable properties of crystals of trapped ions, such as long-range interactions featuring collective motion.Starting with small numbers of ions, it has been proposed that these properties would allow the experimental study of many-body physics and the onset of structural quantum phase transitions between one-and two-dimensional crystals.
We report one-dimensional pinning of a single ion by an optical lattice. A standing-wave cavity produces the lattice potential along the rf-field-free axis of a linear Paul trap. The ion's localization is detected by measuring its fluorescence when excited by standing-wave fields with the same period, but different spatial phases. The experiments agree with an analytical model of the localization process, which we test against numerical simulations. For the best localization achieved, the ion's average coupling to the cavity field is enhanced from 50% to 81(3)% of its maximum possible value, and we infer that the ion is bound in a lattice well with over 97% probability.
We present a proposal for using ion Coulomb crystals in cavity QED experiments. Due to the high degree of spatial confinement of ions in Coulomb crystals, such ion ensembles will have some advantages over systems based on neutral atoms. Simulations of a system with up to 3200 ions coupled to a standing wave cavity with a finesse of about 4000 is presented, and show that our setup can be used for experiments within the strongly coupled regime of cavity QED. Furthermore, the potential of the system as a quantum memory device for light, is considered.
We experimentally study two-dimensional (2D) Coulomb crystals in the "radial-2D" phase of a linear Paul trap. This phase is identified by a 2D ion lattice aligned entirely with the radial plane and is created by imposing a large ratio of axial to radial trapping potentials. Using arrays of up to 19 ^{171}Yb^{+} ions, we demonstrate that the structural phase boundaries of such crystals are well described by the pseudopotential approximation, despite the time-dependent ion positions driven by intrinsic micromotion. We further observe that micromotion-induced heating of the radial-2D crystal is confined to the radial plane. Finally, we verify that the transverse motional modes, which are used in most ion-trap quantum simulation schemes, are well-predictable numerically and remain decoupled and cold in this geometry. Our results establish radial-2D ion crystals as a robust experimental platform for realizing a variety of theoretical proposals in quantum simulation and computation.