Monitoring a single ion's motion by second-order photon correlations
D. Rotter, Manas Mukherjee, François Dubin +1 more
For a single trapped ion, second-order time correlations of fluorescence photons are measured in a self-homodyne configuration by beating the fluorescence with itself. At the nanosecond timescale, the correlations are governed by electronic excitation and decay of the ion and anti-bunching in the resonance fluorescence is observed and quantitatively reproduced. On the other hand, at the microsecond timescale the motion of the ion determines the correlations: secular motional modes, their amplitude and relative coherence are measured. Besides precisely monitoring the trap frequencies, our observations also quantify the temporal stability of the trapping potential.
New Journal of Physics•Apr 10, 2008•19 citations