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Review of Scientific Instruments

Efficiently loading 40Ca+–27Al+ ion crystal using sympathetic cooling and pulsed laser ablation

Chenglong Sun, Kaifeng Cui, Sijia Chao, Yuan-Fei Wei, Jinbo Yuan, Jian Zhong Cao, Hualin Shu, Xue-Ren Huang

Published Nov 1, 2022• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to efficiently load a pair of 40Ca+–27Al+ ion crystals with sympathetic cooling and pulsed laser ablation, serving as a starting step for the 27Al+ clock. We achieved a technique to rapidly detect the loading of hot ions by monitoring the 2S1/2 → 2D5/2 narrow transition of 40Ca+ that couples to the shared motional modes between the two ions. The sympathetic cooling time of the 40Ca+–27Al+ ion pair is measured. Two traps are employed to compare the loading time from two directions and it was found that the loading from the axial direction takes much shorter time than loading from the radial direction of the trap. With the help of adaptively controlled trap potential, our method reduced the average loading time of a 40Ca+–27Al+ pair from 26 to 1 min. This research is an important step for increasing the uptime ratio of the 27Al+ optical clock and is useful for other mixed-species ion crystals based on sympathetic cooling.

DOI
10.1063/5.0109260

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We demonstrate a method to efficiently load a pair of 40Ca+–27Al+ ion crystals with sympathetic cooling and pulsed laser ablation, serving as a starting step for the 27Al+ clock. We achieved a technique to rapidly detect the loading of hot ions by monitoring the 2S1/2 → 2D5/2 narrow transition of 40Ca+ that couples to the shared motional modes between the two ions. The sympathetic cooling time of the 40Ca+–27Al+ ion pair is measured. Two traps are employed to compare the loading time from two directions and it was found that the loading from the axial direction takes much shorter time than loading from the radial direction of the trap. With the help of adaptively controlled trap potential, our method reduced the average loading time of a 40Ca+–27Al+ pair from 26 to 1 min. This research is an important step for increasing the uptime ratio of the 27Al+ optical clock and is useful for other mixed-species ion crystals based on sympathetic cooling.
We report on electromagnetically induced transparency cooling of 40Ca+ to sympathetically cool the three-dimensional secular modes of motion in a 40Ca+–27Al+ two-ion pair near the ground state. We observe simultaneous ground state cooling across all radial modes and axial modes of a 40Ca+–27Al+ ion pair, occupying a broader cooling range in frequency space over 3 MHz. The cooling time is observed to be less than 1 ms. The mean phonon number and heating rates of all motional modes are measured. This study is not only an important step for reducing the secular motion time-dilation shift uncertainty and uptime ratio of 27Al+ optical clock, but also essential for high-fidelity quantum simulations and quantum information processors using trapped ions.
A two-ion pair in a linear Paul trap is extensively used in the research of the simplest quantum-logic system; however, there are few quantitative and comprehensive studies on the motional mode coupling of two-ion systems yet. This study proposes a method to investigate the motional mode coupling of sympathetically cooled two-ion crystals by quantifying three-dimensional (3D) secular spectra of trapped ions using molecular dynamics simulations. The 3D resonance peaks of the 40Ca+–27Al+ pair obtained by using this method were in good agreement with the 3D in- and out-of-phase modes predicted by the mode coupling theory for two ions in equilibrium and the frequency matching errors were lower than 2%. The obtained and predicted amplitudes of these modes were also qualitatively similar. It was observed that the strength of the sympathetic interaction of the 40Ca+–27Al+ pair was primarily determined by its axial in-phase coupling. In addition, the frequencies and amplitudes of the ion pair’s resonance modes (in all dimensions) were sensitive to the relative masses of the ion pair, and a decrease in the mass mismatch enhanced the sympathetic cooling rates. The sympathetic interactions of the 40Ca+–27Al+ pair were slightly weaker than those of the 24Mg+–27Al+ pair, but significantly stronger than those of 9Be+–27Al+. However, the Doppler cooling limit temperature of 40Ca+ is comparable to that of 9Be+ but lower than approximately half of that of 24Mg+. Furthermore, laser cooling systems for 40Ca+ are more reliable than those for 24Mg+ and 9Be+. Therefore, 40Ca+ is probably the best laser-cooled ion for sympathetic cooling and quantum-logic operations of 27Al+ and has particularly more notable comprehensive advantages in the development of high reliability, compact, and transportable 27Al+ optical clocks. This methodology may be extended to multi-ion systems, and it will greatly aid efforts to control the dynamic behaviors of sympathetic cooling as well as the development of low-heating-rate quantum logic clocks.
We investigate the dynamics of an ion sympathetically cooled by another laser-cooled ion or small ion crystal. To this end, we develop simple models of the cooling dynamics in the limit of weak Coulomb interactions. Experimentally, we create a two-ion crystal of Ca + and Al + by photo-ionization of neutral atoms produced by laser ablation. We characterize the velocity distribution of the laser-ablated atoms crossing the trap by time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. We observe neutral atom velocities much higher than the ones of thermally heated samples and find as a consequence long sympathethic cooling times before crystallization occurs. Our key result is a new technique for detecting the loading of an initially hot ion with energy in the eV range by monitoring the motional state of a Doppler-cooled ion already present in the trap. This technique not only detects the ion but also provides information about the dynamics of the sympathetic cooling process.
The 27 Al + ion optical clock is one of the most attractive optical clocks due to its own advantages such as low black-body radiation shift at room temperature and insensitivity to the magnetic drift. However, it cannot be laser-cooled directly in the absence of 167nm laser to date. This problem can be solved by sympathetic cooling. In this work, a linear Paul trap is used to trap both 40 Ca + and 27 Al + ions simultaneously, and a single Doppler-cooled 40 Ca + ion is employed to sympathetically cool a single 27 Al + ion. Thus a 'bright-dark' two-ion crystal has been successfully synthesized. The temperature of the crystal has been estimated to be about 7 mK by measuring the ratio of carrier and sideband spectral intensities. Finally, the dark ion is proved to be an 27 Al + ion by precise measuring of the ion crystal's secular motion frequency, which means that it is a great step for our 27 Al + quantum logic clock.
With the advent of optical clocks featuring fractional frequency uncertainties on the order of 10−17 and below, new applications such as chronometric leveling with few-centimeter height resolution emerge. We are developing a transportable optical clock based on a single trapped aluminum ion, which is interrogated via quantum logic spectroscopy. We employ singly charged calcium as the logic ion for sympathetic cooling, state preparation, and readout. Here, we present a simple and compact physics and laser package for manipulation of 40Ca+. Important features are a segmented multilayer trap with separate loading and probing zones, a compact titanium vacuum chamber, a near-diffraction-limited imaging system with high numerical aperture based on a single biaspheric lens, and an all-in-fiber 40Ca+ repump laser system. We present preliminary estimates of the trap-induced frequency shifts on 27Al+, derived from measurements with a single calcium ion. The micromotion-induced second-order Doppler shift for 27Al+ has been determined to be δνEMMν=−0.4−0.3+0.4×10−18 and the black-body radiation shift is δνBBR/ν = (−4.0 ± 0.4) × 10−18. Moreover, heating rates of 30 (7) quanta per second at trap frequencies of ωrad,Ca+ ≈ 2π × 2.5 MHz (ωax,Ca+ ≈ 2π × 1.5 MHz) in radial (axial) direction have been measured, enabling interrogation times of a few hundreds of milliseconds.
44Ca+, Zn+, or Ga+ ions are sympathetically cooled by Coulomb interaction with laser-cooled 40Ca+ ions, and motional resonances of these ions are observed by monitoring the fluorescence of the 40Ca+ ions. In the experiment of sympathetic cooling of 44Ca+, the ratio of the decrease in the fluorescence signal at the motional resonance of the sympathetically cooled species to that at the motional resonance of the laser-cooled species is almost proportional to the number ratio of the two species. In the case of Ga+ ions as the sympathetically cooled species, the change in the response of sympathetically cooled species becomes larger as the temperature of the ion cloud decreases. Crystallization of an ion cloud which contains both 40Ca+ and Zn+ (or Ga+) is observed.