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AIP conference proceedings

Spatial separation of atomic states in a laser cooled ion crystal

Wolfgang Alt, M. Block, P. Seibert, Günther Werth

Published Jan 1, 1999• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A laser cooled ion crystal containing several hundred Ca+ ions has been stored in a linear Paul trap. Cooling is provided by a red detund laser at the 4S1/2−4P1/2 resonance transition. A second laser serves for repumping of those ions which decay from the excited 4P1/2 level to the metastable 3D3/2 state. The ions can be additionally excited by a third laser to a long lived metastable 3D5/2 energy level which decouples them from the cooling laser radiation. The light pressure acting upon the laser cooled ions pushes them into the direction of the laser beam. The ions in the metastable 3D5/2 state, however, do not experience any light pressure force and diffuse to the crystal side which points towards the cooling laser. Part of the crystal then appears dark. Depending on the number of ions in the crystal and on the fraction of the excited ions, the spatial separation of the ions in the metastable state and the ions in the cooling cycle can be as large as several hundred microns.

DOI
10.1063/1.57481

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A laser cooled ion crystal containing several hundred Ca+ ions has been stored in a linear Paul trap. Cooling is provided by a red detund laser at the 4S1/2−4P1/2 resonance transition. A second laser serves for repumping of those ions which decay from the excited 4P1/2 level to the metastable 3D3/2 state. The ions can be additionally excited by a third laser to a long lived metastable 3D5/2 energy level which decouples them from the cooling laser radiation. The light pressure acting upon the laser cooled ions pushes them into the direction of the laser beam. The ions in the metastable 3D5/2 state, however, do not experience any light pressure force and diffuse to the crystal side which points towards the cooling laser. Part of the crystal then appears dark. Depending on the number of ions in the crystal and on the fraction of the excited ions, the spatial separation of the ions in the metastable state and the ions in the cooling cycle can be as large as several hundred microns.
We have produced a laser-cooled ion crystal in a linear Paul trap containing several hundred Ca+{\mathrm{Ca}}^{+}Ca+ ions. A portion of the ions can be excited by an additional laser to a long-lived metastable energy level that decouples them from the cooling laser radiation. The light pressure acting upon the remaining laser-cooled ions forces them into the direction of the laser beam, while the ions in the metastable state drift to the crystal side that points toward the cooling laser. Depending on the number of ions in the crystal and on the fraction of the excited ions, the spatial separation of the ions in the metastable state and the ions in the cooling cycle can be as large as several hundred micrometers.
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.
With two ions in a spheroidal Paul trap, the harmonic trapping potential turns, by Coulomb repulsion, into a bistable well. Two Ba ions have been confined, laser-cooled, and observed, via their laser-excited resonance scattering, by a spatially resolving photomultiplier, or intensifying CCD camera. A repump laser releases the ions from a metastable state. Well-cooled ions are found localized. When the laser is detuned, the Raman cooling rate and the ions’ temperature vary. A transition from the crystallized state to a toroidal gas takes place. The ions are discriminated when one (i) gets excited into a non-fluorescing metastable state, or (ii) is of another isotopic species. Hopping rates of 1 s −1 are found at high thermal excitation. Elsewhere, the rates drop by two orders of magnitude, and vary resonantly with temperature near potential energy/kinetic energy = 15, where the bright ion’s hopping upstream of the laser beam is five times more likely than downstream. Two discernible ions in a trap represent a microscopic model system for the study of reaction kinetics.
This paper reports on trapping and laser-cooling of singly-ionized strontium ions in a linear Paul trap. We demonstrate loading of large ion clouds containing as much as 106 ions and laser cooling down to the Coulomb crystal transition. We observe the spatial segregation of the different Sr+ isotopes due to the mass-dependent Paul trap stiffness. Sympathetic cooling of the different isotopes is demonstrated, either by laser-cooling of 88Sr+ (83% abundance) or of 86Sr+ (10% abundance). These demonstrations open the way to the use of a large ion Coulomb crystal for quantum optics and quantum information experiments, where the strong confinement, the long lifetime, and the absence of perturbation by cooling lasers are crucial.
We have created multispecies Coulomb crystals in a linear Paul trap containing up to a few hundred ions of which more than 5050%50 were cooled only sympathetically through the Coulomb interaction with laser-cooled Mg+{\mathrm{Mg}}^{+}Mg+ ions. In an extreme case, one laser-cooled ion maintained order in a 15 ion string. Ion species segregation was obtained by radiation pressure. Previous experiments and molecular dynamics simulations suggest the temperature is 10 mK or lower. These results indicate that a wide range of atomic and molecular ions can be cooled and localized in linear Paul traps which is important for improvements in spectroscopic studies of such ions.