No Arabic abstract
We study the stochastic dynamics of a particle in a periodically driven potential. For atomic ions trapped in radio-frequency Paul traps, noise heating and laser cooling typically act slowly in comparison with the unperturbed motion. These stochastic processes can be accounted for in terms of a probability distribution defined over the action variables, which would otherwise be conserved within the regular regions of the Hamiltonian phase space. We present a semiclassical theory of low-saturation laser cooling applicable from the limit of low-amplitude motion to large-amplitude motion, accounting fully for the time-dependent and anharmonic trap. We employ our approach to a detailed study of the stochastic dynamics of a single ion, drawing general conclusions regarding the nonequilibrium dynamics of laser-cooled trapped ions. We predict a regime of anharmonic motion in which laser cooling becomes diffusive (i.e., it is equally likely to cool the ion as it is to heat it), and can also turn into effective heating. This implies that a high-energy ion could be easily lost from the trap despite being laser cooled; however, we find that this loss can be counteracted using a laser detuning much larger than Doppler detuning.
We present and derive analytic expressions for a fundamental limit to the sympathetic cooling of ions in radio-frequency traps using cold atoms. The limit arises from the work done by the trap electric field during a long-range ion-atom collision and applies even to cooling by a zero-temperature atomic gas in a perfectly compensated trap. We conclude that in current experimental implementations this collisional heating prevents access to the regimes of single-partial-wave atom-ion interaction or quantized ion motion. We determine conditions on the atom-ion mass ratio and on the trap parameters for reaching the s-wave collision regime and the trap ground state.
We theoretically investigate the process of splitting two-ion crystals in segmented Paul traps, i.e. the structural transition from two ions confined in a common well to ions confined in separate wells. The precise control of this process by application of suitable voltage ramps to the trap segments is non-trivial, as the harmonic confinement transiently vanishes during the process. This makes the ions strongly susceptible to background electric field noise, and to static offset fields in the direction of the trap axis. We analyze the reasons why large energy transfers can occur, which are impulsive acceleration, the presence of residual background fields and enhanced anomalous heating. For the impulsive acceleration, we identify the diabatic and adiabatic regimes, which are characterized by different scaling behavior of the energy transfer with respect to time. We propose a suitable control scheme based on experimentally accessible parameters. Simulations are used to verify both the high sensitivity of the splitting result and the performance of our control scheme. Finally, we analyze the impact of trap geometry parameters on the crystal splitting process.
Continuous wave (CW) lasers are the enabling technology for producing ultracold atoms and molecules through laser cooling and trapping. The resulting pristine samples of slow moving particles are the de facto starting point for both fundamental and applied science when a highly-controlled quantum system is required. Laser cooled atoms have recently led to major advances in quantum information, the search to understand dark energy, quantum chemistry, and quantum sensors. However, CW laser technology currently limits laser cooling and trapping to special types of elements that do not include highly abundant and chemically relevant atoms such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. Here, we demonstrate that Doppler cooling and trapping by optical frequency combs may provide a route to trapped, ultracold atoms whose spectra are not amenable to CW lasers. We laser cool a gas of atoms by driving a two-photon transition with an optical frequency comb, an efficient process to which every comb tooth coherently contributes. We extend this technique to create a magneto-optical trap (MOT), an electromagnetic beaker for accumulating the laser-cooled atoms for further study. Our results suggest that the efficient frequency conversion offered by optical frequency combs could provide a key ingredient for producing trapped, ultracold samples of natures most abundant building blocks, as well as antihydrogen. As such, the techniques demonstrated here may enable advances in fields as disparate as molecular biology and the search for physics beyond the standard model.
We study a method for mass-selective removal of ions from a Paul trap by parametric excitation. This can be achieved by applying an oscillating electric quadrupole field at twice the secular frequency $omega_{text{sec}}$ using pairs of opposing electrodes. While excitation near the resonance with the frequency $omega_{text{sec}}$ only leads to a linear increase of the amplitude with excitation duration, parametric excitation near $2, omega_{text{sec}}$ results in an exponential increase of the amplitude. This enables efficient removal of ions from the trap with modest excitation voltages and narrow bandwidth, therefore substantially reducing the disturbance of ions with other charge-to-mass ratios. We numerically study and compare the mass selectivity of the two methods. In addition, we experimentally show that the barium isotopes with 136 and 137 nucleons can be removed from small ion crystals and ejected out of the trap while keeping $^{138}text{Ba}^{+}$ ions Doppler cooled, corresponding to a mass selectivity of better than $Delta m / m = 1/138$. This method can be widely applied to ion trapping experiments without major modifications, since it only requires modulating the potential of the ion trap.
A theoretical investigation for implementing a scheme of forced evaporative cooling in radio-frequency (rf) adiabatic potentials is presented. Supposing the atoms to be trapped by a rf field RF1, the cooling procedure is facilitated using a second rf source RF2. This second rf field produces a controlled coupling between the spin states dressed by RF1. The evaporation is then possible in a pulsed or continuous mode. In the pulsed case, atoms with a given energy are transferred into untrapped dressed states by abruptly switching off the interaction. In the continuous case, it is possible for energetic atoms to adiabatically follow the doubly-dressed states and escape out of the trap. Our results also show that when the frequencies of the fields RF1 and RF2 are separated by at least the Rabi frequency associated with RF1, additional evaporation zones appear which can make this process more efficient.