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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics

A Trapped-Ion Phonon Laser

Kerry J. Vahala, Maximillian Herrmann, S. Knünz, Valentin Batteiger, G. Saathoff, Theodor W. Hänsch, Thomas Udem

Published Jan 1, 2009• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A cooled, trapped Mg+ ion is excited using a continuous, blue-detuned pump. Coherent oscillatory motion is observed. It is shown to result from stimulated emission of center-of-mass phonons, constituting the mechanical analog of a laser.
DOI
10.1364/iqec.2009.ifb4

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We demonstrate a trapped-ion system with two competing dissipation channels, implemented independently on two ion species cotrapped in a Paul trap. By controlling coherent spin-oscillator couplings and optical pumping rates we explore the phase diagram of this system, which exhibits a regime analogous to that of a (phonon) laser but operates close to the quantum ground state with an average phonon number of n[over ¯]<10. We demonstrate phase locking of the oscillator to an additional resonant drive, and also observe the phase diffusion of the resulting state under dissipation by reconstructing the quantum state from a measurement of the characteristic function.
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