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Physics Bulletin

Suspended Animation?

P. E. G. Baird

Published Dec 1, 1985• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The ability to cool and trap atoms and ions has tremendous appeal. For spectroscopy, what cleaner environment could there be in which to study charged particles and atoms than an almost stationary system held, trapped in space, for times varying from seconds to months?
DOI
10.1088/0031-9112/36/12/022

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Charged particles can be confined by electromagnetic fields to a finite volume in space for extended periods of time. The extremely long observation time along with the nearly perturbation-free environment under ultra-high vacuum conditions opens new regions of spectroscopy, which are not accessible by other methods. In microwave spectroscopy resonance lines as narrow as Δv/v = 3 × 10−12 have been obtained, which leads directly to the possible development of a new type of frequency standard. Lifetimes of metastable levels in the region of many seconds can be observed, as well as rare collision processes between ions and molecules, which are important for the formation of larger molecules in interstellar space. Finally, phenomena like crystallisation in a non-neutral plasma may be investigated at sub-Kelvin temperafures. accessible by the new technique of laser cooling of ions.
Individual atomic and subatomic particles may be observed over long periods by confining them in “traps without material walls”. The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded in 1989 to Hans Dehmelt and Wolfgang Paul (together with Nor‐man F. Ramsey) for first introducing this concept. Such traps are made possible by extending the principles of two‐dimensional focusing of particles to three dimensions. This led, in turn, to precision radiofrequency spectroscopy and quadrupole mass spectrometry. For example, side‐band cooling, in which electrons absorb photons with an energy just below the resonance energy and use their kinetic energy to supply the balance, allowed an electron to be held for ten months in the center of a magnetic trap. In this way, ½ g was determined to be 1.001159652188(4).
We demonstrate the ability to load, cool and detect singly charged calcium ions in a surface electrode trap using only visible and infrared lasers for the trapped-ion control. As opposed to the standard methods of cooling using dipole-allowed transitions, we combine power broadening of a quadrupole transition at 729 nm with quenching of the upper level using a dipole allowed transition at 854 nm. By observing the resulting 393 nm fluorescence we are able to perform background-free detection of the ion. We show that this system can be used to smoothly transition between the Doppler cooling and sideband cooling regimes, and verify theoretical predictions throughout this range. We achieve scattering rates which reliably allow recooling after collision events and allow ions to be loaded from a thermal atomic beam. This work is compatible with recent advances in optical waveguides, and thus opens a path in current technologies for large-scale quantum information processing. In situations where dielectric materials are placed close to trapped ions, it carries the additional advantage of using wavelengths which do not lead to significant charging, which should facilitate high rate optical interfaces between remotely held ions.