Generation of high-intensity precision ion and atom beams

GongShangqing

Shicheng Jiang, Konstantin E. Dorfman

Abstract Relative intensity squeezing (RIS) is emerging as a promising technique for performing high-precision measurements beyond the shot-noise limit. A commonly used way to produce RIS in the visible/infrared range is generating correlated “twin beams” through four-wave mixing by driving atomic resonances with weak laser beams. Here, we propose an all-optical strong-field scheme to produce a series of relative-intensity-squeezed high-order harmonic “twin beams”. Due to the nature of high-harmonic generation, the frequencies of the “twin beams” can cover a broad range of photon energy. Our proposal paves the way for the development of non-classical XUV sources and high precision spectroscopy tools in the strong-field regime.

Polykarp Kusch

Martin Disla, Brian Kaufman, Matthew J. Wright

H W Wang, Haoyu Huang, Jianing Sun +4 more

We report a programmable multiple ion beam system developed by combing a magneto-optical trap ion source with a spatial light modulator (SLM). Neutral rubidium atoms are trapped into a magneto-optical trap and cooled to 700 μK. An excitation laser beam, the intensity distribution of which is shaped into a square array by the SLM, selectively excites the cold atoms, which are subsequently ionized by an ionization laser beam. The ions are then extracted by an electric field to produce multiple ion beams. A 3×3 ion beam array has been generated. The size of each beams is 180 μm, and the transversal reduced emittance of multiple ion beams at the source is evaluated to be 1.65 × 10−9 m radeV. We also demonstrate the generation of ion bunches with a user-defined spatial pattern. In the future, by integrating this programmable multiple ion beam system with high reduction ion optics, it is possible to generate nanoscale multiple focused ion beams for the potential applications in maskless patterning and direct writing lithography.

H.J. Beier