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Coherent Transverse Oscillation of Coulomb Crystals in a Linear Paul Trap

室尾　健人, 岡本宏己, 百合　庸介

Published Mar 1, 2026• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

A Coulomb crystal formed in a linear Paul trap by Doppler cooling with a single axial laser often shows undesired oscillatory behavior in the direction perpendicular to the trap axis. This transverse oscillation is found to include two distinct coherent motions; in addition to the well-known micromotion driven by external error fields, there exists another natural oscillatory component. The latter oscillation is a kind of statistical phenomenon that takes place even in the absence of any mechanical errors. A detailed theoretical study is performed to clarify the basic characteristics of these overlapping coherent motions. A simple cooling scheme is proposed to minimize the transverse oscillation amplitude of a Coulomb crystal without use of extra lasers. The validity of theoretical predictions made in the present paper is confirmed through molecular dynamics simulations assuming the three-dimensional electrode geometry of a typical Paul trap.

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A Coulomb crystal formed in a linear Paul trap by Doppler cooling with a single axial laser often shows undesired oscillatory behavior in the direction perpendicular to the trap axis. This transverse oscillation is found to include two distinct coherent motions; in addition to the well-known micromotion driven by external error fields, there exists another natural oscillatory component. The latter oscillation is a kind of statistical phenomenon that takes place even in the absence of any mechanical errors. A detailed theoretical study is performed to clarify the basic characteristics of these overlapping coherent motions. A simple cooling scheme is proposed to minimize the transverse oscillation amplitude of a Coulomb crystal without use of extra lasers. The validity of theoretical predictions made in the present paper is confirmed through molecular dynamics simulations assuming the three-dimensional electrode geometry of a typical Paul trap.
A simple method of cooling the transverse motion of an ion cloud in a linear Paul trap with a single axial laser is proposed. Transverse thermal oscillations of ions are indirectly damped by the longitudinal laser friction via an additional radio-frequency potential that resonantly couples two degrees of freedom. The fundamental mechanism of the present cooling scheme is theoretically described with the help of a harmonic oscillator model. It is shown that the indirect cooling rate can be considerably enhanced when the frequencies of the transverse and longitudinal ion oscillations satisfy a certain relation. The validity of theoretical predictions is confirmed through molecular dynamics simulations in which the detailed three-dimensional configuration of a typical Paul trap is incorporated.
The quadrupole linear Paul trap is one of the key instruments in building highly stable atomic clocks. However, a frequency reference based on a single trapped ion is limited in stability due to the time needed for the interrogation cycle which cannot be further shortened. A promising strategy is the utilization of multiple trapped ions. The ions of the same kind then repulse each other with the Coulomb force, which is countered by the ponderomotive force of the time depended field in the trap. A few ions form a chain along the axis of a linear Paul trap. Adding more ions (a few tens or hundreds) gives rise to Coulomb crystals. We created an efficient simulation code which calculates the motion of such collections of ions in quasi-static radiofrequency fields of real linear quadrupole traps (including the micromotion). We include a model for laser cooling of the ions. The simulation tool can be used to study the formation and the dynamics of Coulomb crystals under conditions corresponding to various experimental setups.
We experimentally study two-dimensional (2D) Coulomb crystals in the "radial-2D" phase of a linear Paul trap. This phase is identified by a 2D ion lattice aligned entirely with the radial plane and is created by imposing a large ratio of axial to radial trapping potentials. Using arrays of up to 19 ^{171}Yb^{+} ions, we demonstrate that the structural phase boundaries of such crystals are well described by the pseudopotential approximation, despite the time-dependent ion positions driven by intrinsic micromotion. We further observe that micromotion-induced heating of the radial-2D crystal is confined to the radial plane. Finally, we verify that the transverse motional modes, which are used in most ion-trap quantum simulation schemes, are well-predictable numerically and remain decoupled and cold in this geometry. Our results establish radial-2D ion crystals as a robust experimental platform for realizing a variety of theoretical proposals in quantum simulation and computation.
Abstract Using a 2D ion crystal for quantum simulation and computation has been pursued for a long time. The coherent manipulation of a stationary 2D crystal in the Paul trap may be hampered by the micromotion synchronous with the oscillating electric field. Here, a simple Paul trap that stably confines over 20 ions in a stationary 2D crystal is presented. The disturbance of the micromotion in coherent operations is mitigated by making the direction of micromotion perpendicular to the transverse direction of the 2D crystal. To achieve the condition of perpendicularity, the structure of the trap electrodes is comprehensively designed, which also provides the controllability of rotating principal axes. The transverse vibrational modes by Raman laser‐beams are addressed and coherent evolution of sideband transitions on these modes observed. Moreover, this trap allows for optical access with a 0.86 numerical aperture which facilitates applying individually addressing laser‐beams. This work can be an example of realizing a 2D‐trapped‐ion based quantum simulator and computer in a Paul trap.
Coulomb crystals, containing up to a few hundred ions of which more than 50% were cooled sympathetically by the Coulomb interaction with laser cooled Mg+ ions, have been produced in a linear Paul trap. By controlling the balance of the radiation pressure from the two cooling lasers, the Coulomb crystals could be segregated according to ion species. Previous studies of ion crystals and molecular dynamics simulations suggest that the temperature may be around 10 mK or lower. The obtained results indicate that a wide range of atomic and molecular ions, which due to their internal structures are not amenable to direct laser cooling, can be effectively cooled and localized (crystallized) in linear Paul traps. For high resolution spectroscopy of such ions this may turn out to be very useful.
We present a simple Paul trap that stably accommodates up to a couple of dozens of \ensuremath{^{171}\mathrm{Yb}^+~} ions in a stationary two-dimensional lattice. The trap is constructed on a single plate of gold-plated laser-machined alumina and can produce a pancake-like pseudo-potential that makes ions form a self-assembly two-dimensional crystal which locates on the plane composed of axial and one of the transverse axes with around 5 μμμm spacing. We use Raman laser beams to coherently manipulate these ion-qubits where the net propagation direction is perpendicular to the plane of the crystal and micromotion. We perform the coherent operations and study the spectrum of vibrational modes through globally addressed Raman laser-beams on a dozen of ions in the two-dimensional crystal. We measure the amplitude of micro-motion by comparing the strengths of carrier and micro-motion sideband transitions with three ions, where the micro-motion amplitude is similar to that of a single ion. The spacings of ions are small enough for large coupling strengths, which is a favorable condition for two-dimensional quantum simulation.