The construction of a Penning ion trap is described. The trap has been used to confine clouds of magnesium ions for periods of many hours and the ions have been cooled to sub-kelvin temperatures by the method of laser cooling. Preliminary experiments with the cooled ions are reported.

Optica Acta International Journal of OpticsApr 1, 198616 citations

Quantum optics with trapped and laser cooled magnesium ions

Richard Claude Thompson, David John Bate, Kishan Dholakia +2 more

We report recent experiments at Imperial College with magnesium ions confined in an ion trap and cooled by irradiation with a frequency-doubled dye laser. The work covers observation of quantum jumps in single ions in a Penning trap, measurement of oscillation frequencies in the combined trap, and a preliminary study of the spectrum of time intervals between consecutive detected photons. Theoretical considerations relevant to the experiments are also presented.

Physica ScriptaSep 1, 199213 citations