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Applied Physics Letters

Nonselective Paul ion trap loading with a light-emitting diode

Ilia V. Zalivako, A. Borisenko, Ilya A. Semerikov, Pavel Sidorov, Pavel Vishnyakov, Ksenia Yu. Khabarova, N. Kolachevsky

Published Sep 2, 2019• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple nonisotope-selective method for ion trap loading, which is based on the irradiation of trap electrodes precoated with materials with a low work function by a light-emitting diode (LED). Photoelectrons emitted from the electrode surface and accelerated in the trap electric field ionize the atomic beam inside the trap, which results in the trap loading. We studied Y2O3 and Mg coatings for the trap electrodes and experimentally demonstrated trapping of single 24Mg+ ions as well as large ion crystals composed of up to 103 particles using a 400 nm LED. This method can be readily implemented in a variety of applications where simplicity, compactness, and robustness are critical, such as in portable ion frequency standards and commercial ion-based devices, for example. Possible modifications of this technique aimed for selective loading, reduction of induced electric stray fields, and getting rid of atomic oven are also discussed.

DOI
10.1063/1.5115324

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We demonstrate a simple nonisotope-selective method for ion trap loading, which is based on the irradiation of trap electrodes precoated with materials with a low work function by a light-emitting diode (LED). Photoelectrons emitted from the electrode surface and accelerated in the trap electric field ionize the atomic beam inside the trap, which results in the trap loading. We studied Y2O3 and Mg coatings for the trap electrodes and experimentally demonstrated trapping of single 24Mg+ ions as well as large ion crystals composed of up to 103 particles using a 400 nm LED. This method can be readily implemented in a variety of applications where simplicity, compactness, and robustness are critical, such as in portable ion frequency standards and commercial ion-based devices, for example. Possible modifications of this technique aimed for selective loading, reduction of induced electric stray fields, and getting rid of atomic oven are also discussed.
We produce large numbers of low-energy ions by photoionization of laser-cooled atoms inside a surface-electrode-based Paul trap. The isotope-selective trap's loading rate of $4\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{5}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}{\mathrm{Yb}}^{+}\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{ions}∕\mathrm{s}$ exceeds that attained by photoionization (electron-impact ionization) of an atomic beam by three (six) orders of magnitude. Traps as shallow as 0.13eV0.13\phantom{\rule{0.3em}{0ex}}\mathrm{eV}0.13eV are easily loaded with this technique. The ions are confined in the same spatial region as the laser-cooled atoms, which will allow the experimental investigation of interactions between cold ions and cold atoms or Bose-Einstein condensates.
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We demonstrate loading of ions into a surface-electrode trap (SET) from a remote, laser-cooled source of neutral atoms. We first cool and load $\ensuremath{\sim}$106{10}^{6}106 neutral 88{}^{88}88Sr atoms into a magneto-optical trap from an oven that has no line of sight with the SET. The cold atoms are then pushed with a resonant laser into the trap region where they are subsequently photoionized and trapped in an SET operated at a cryogenic temperature of 4.6 K. We present studies of the loading process and show that our technique achieves ion loading into a shallow (15 meV depth) trap at rates as high as 125 ions/s while drastically reducing the amount of metal deposition on the trap surface as compared with direct loading from a hot vapor. Furthermore, we note that due to multiple stages of isotopic filtering in our loading process, this technique has the potential for enhanced isotopic selectivity over other loading methods. Rapid loading from a clean, isotopically pure, and precooled source may enable scalable quantum-information processing with trapped ions in large, low-depth surface-trap arrays that are not amenable to loading from a hot atomic beam.
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Physics We conducted an experiment to load a shallow planar ion trap from a cold atom source of Ytterbium using photoionization. The surface trap consisted of a three-rod radio frequency Paul trap fabricated using standard printed circuit board techniques. The cold atom source was an isotope-selective magneto-optical trap of naturally-occurring Yb isotopes. The confining beams were provided by commercially-available ultra-violet diode lasers locked to an atomic reference using the Dichroic Atomic Vapor Laser Lock technique. We used photoionization from the Yb magneto-optical trap located within the region of the ion trapping potential.