No Arabic abstract
We study the formation and destabilization of dark states in a single trapped 88Sr+ ion caused by the cooling and repumping laser fields required for Doppler cooling and fluorescence detection of the ion. By numerically solving the time-dependent density matrix equations for the eight-level system consisting of the sublevels of the 5s 2S1/2, 5p 2P1/2, and 4d 2D3/2 states, we analyze the different types of dark states and how to prevent them in order to maximize the scattering rate, which is crucial for both the cooling and the detection of the ion. The influence of the laser linewidths and ion motion on the scattering rate and the dark resonances is studied. The calculations are then compared with experimental results obtained with an endcap ion trap system located at the National Research Council of Canada and found to be in good agreement. The results are applicable also to other alkaline earth ions and isotopes without hyperfine structure.
Many ion species commonly used for laser-cooled ion trapping studies have a low-lying metastable 2D3/2 state that can become populated due to spontaneous emission from the 2P1/2 excited state. This requires a repumper laser to maintain the ion in the Doppler cooling cycle. Typically the 2D3/2 state, or some of its hyperfine components if the ion has nuclear spin, has a higher multiplicity than the upper state of the repumping transition. This can lead to dark states, which have to be destabilized by an external magnetic field or by modulating the polarization of the repumper laser. We propose using unpolarized, incoherent amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) to drive the repumping transition. An ASE source offers several advantages compared to a laser. It prevents the buildup of dark states without external polarization modulation even in zero magnetic field, it can drive multiple hyperfine transitions simultaneously, and it requires no frequency stabilization. These features make it very compact and robust, which is essential for the development of practical, transportable optical ion clocks. We construct a theoretical model for the ASE radiation, including the possibility of the source being partially polarized. Using 88Sr+ as an example, the performance of the ASE source compared to a single-mode laser is analyzed by numerically solving the eight-level density matrix equations for the involved energy levels. Finally a reduced three-level system is derived, yielding a simple formula for the excited state population and scattering rate, which can be used to optimize the experimental parameters. The required ASE power spectral density can be obtained with current technology.
We investigate the temporal dynamics of Doppler cooling of an initially hot single trapped atom in the weak binding regime using a semiclassical approach. We develop an analytical model for the simplest case of a single vibrational mode for a harmonic trap, and show how this model allows us to estimate the initial energy of the trapped particle by observing the fluorescence rate during the cooling process. The experimental implementation of this temperature measurement provides a way to measure atom heating rates by observing the temperature rise in the absence of cooling. This method is technically relatively simple compared to conventional sideband detection methods, and the two methods are in reasonable agreement. We also discuss the effects of RF micromotion, relevant for a trapped atomic ion, and the effect of coupling between the vibrational modes on the cooling dynamics.
We provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for describing the dynamics of a single trapped ion interacting with a neutral buffer gas, thus extending our previous studies on buffer-gas cooling of ions beyond the critical mass ratio [B. Holtkemeier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 233003 (2016)]. By transforming the collisional processes into a frame, where the ions micromotion is assigned to the buffer gas atoms, our model allows one to investigate the influence of non-homogeneous buffer gas configurations as well as higher multipole orders of the radio-frequency trap in great detail. Depending on the neutral-to-ion mass ratio, three regimes of sympathetic cooling are identified which are characterized by the form of the ions energy distribution in equilibrium. We provide analytic expressions and numerical simulations of the ions energy distribution, spatial profile and cooling rates for these different regimes. Based on these findings, a method for actively decreasing the ions energy by reducing the spatial expansion of the buffer gas arises (Forced Sympathetic Cooling).
We propose a new dark-state cooling method of trapped ion systems in the Lamb-Dicke limit. With application of microwave dressing the ion, we can obtain two electromagnetically induced transparency structures. The heating effects caused by the carrier and the blue sideband transition vanish due to the EIT effects and the final mean phonon numbers can be much less than the recoil limit. Our scheme is robust to fluctuations of microwave power and laser intensities which provides a broad cooling bandwidth to cool motional modes of a linear ion chain. Moreover, it is more suitable to cool four-level ions on a large-scale ion chip.
Trapped ions are a promising candidate for large scale quantum computation. Several systems have been built in both academic and industrial settings to implement modestly-sized quantum algorithms. Efficient cooling of the motional degrees of freedom is a key requirement for high-fidelity quantum operations using trapped ions. Here, we present a technique whereby individual ions are used to cool individual motional modes in parallel, reducing the time required to bring an ion chain to its motional ground state. We demonstrate this technique experimentally and develop a model to understand the efficiency of our parallel sideband cooling technique compared to more traditional methods. This technique is applicable to any system using resolved sideband cooling of co-trapped atomic species and only requires individual addressing of the trapped particles.