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European Quantum Electronics Conference (EQEC)

Quantum memory for light based on ion coulomb crystals

Peter F. Herskind, A. Mortensen, E.S. Nielsen, Jens Lykke Sørensen, Michael Drewsen

Published Jan 18, 2006• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The authors report on the stored light in an ion Coulomb crystal coupled to a relatively low finesse optical resonator. A two-species ion Coulomb crystal is employed in a linear Paul trap, where the laser cooled heavier ion-component sympathetically cools the lighter ion-component.
DOI
10.1109/eqec.2005.1567458

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Applied Physics Letters•Aug 21, 2023•8 citations
Coulomb crystals, containing up to a few hundred ions of which more than 50% were cooled sympathetically by the Coulomb interaction with laser cooled Mg+ ions, have been produced in a linear Paul trap. By controlling the balance of the radiation pressure from the two cooling lasers, the Coulomb crystals could be segregated according to ion species. Previous studies of ion crystals and molecular dynamics simulations suggest that the temperature may be around 10 mK or lower. The obtained results indicate that a wide range of atomic and molecular ions, which due to their internal structures are not amenable to direct laser cooling, can be effectively cooled and localized (crystallized) in linear Paul traps. For high resolution spectroscopy of such ions this may turn out to be very useful.
We obtain bi-component Coulomb crystals using laser-cooled 40Ca+ ions to sympathetically cool 9Be+ ions in a linear Paul trap. The shell structures of the bi-component Coulomb crystals are investigated. The secular motion frequencies of the two different ions are determined and compared with those in the single-component Coulomb crystals. In the radial direction, the resonant motion frequencies of the two ionic species shift toward each other due to the strong motion coupling in the ion trap. In the axial direction, the motion frequency of the laser-cooled 40Ca+ is impervious to the sympathetically cooled 9Be+ ions because the spatially separation of the two different ionic species leads to the weak motion coupling in the axial direction.
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 reported the realization of a 174Yb+–113Cd+ bi-species Coulomb crystal comprising 174Yb+, a heavier ion, as coolant and verified the potential of applying a coolant ion with a greater mass than the clock ion to sympathetically cooled microwave frequency standard. The two species of massive ions stably trapped in a Paul trap make up this large two-component crystal. The 113Cd+ ions are trapped in the center, which reduces considerably RF heating and excess micro-motion to which the 113Cd+ ions are subjected. Under this scheme, the uncertainty due to the second-order Doppler effect is reduced to 5×10−16, which represents an order of magnitude improvement over sympathetic cooled 40Ca+–113Cd+ crystal. The second-order Zeeman frequency shift, which contributes the largest term of the systematic frequency shifts to the microwave ion frequency standard, is estimated to be as low as 7.133×10−13 corresponding to the low value of the operating magnetic field. The relevant AC Stark shift uncertainty is estimated to be 4×10−19. These results demonstrate that using a heavier coolant ion is far superior and confirm the feasibility of a sympathetic-cooled cadmium-ion microwave clock system employing a 174Yb+–113Cd+ bicrystal.