Motional studies of one and two laser-cooled trapped ions for electric-field sensing applications

Abstract

We have studied the dynamics of one and two laser-cooled trapped ${}^{40}$Ca${}^{+}$ ions by applying electric fields of different nature along the axial direction of the trap, namely, driving the motion with a harmonic dipolar field, or with white noise. These two types of driving induce distinct motional states of the axial modes: a coherent oscillation with the dipolar field, or an enhanced Brownian motion due to an additional contribution to the heating rate from the electric noise. In both scenarios, the sensitivity of an isolated ion and a laser-cooled two-ion crystal has been evaluated and compared. The analysis and understanding of this dynamics is important towards the implementation of a novel Penning trap mass-spectroscopy technique based on optical detection, aiming at improving precision and sensitivity.

Keywords:

• Ion traps
• Doppler cooling
• sensitivity
• phase transition
• precision sensing
• mass spectrometry

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

1 For laser-cooling in an ion trap see, e.g. [11].

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council (contract number 278648-TRAPSENSOR), from the Spanish MINECO/FEDER through [project number FPA2012-32076], [project number FPA2015-67694-P], [project number FIS2015-69983-P], [project number UNGR10-1E-501], [project number UNGR13-1E-1830], Juan de la Cierva grant IJCI-2015-26091, and ‘Programa de Garantía Juvenil’; from the Spanish MECD through [PhD grant number FPU15-04679]; from Junta de Andalucía/FEDER IE-57131; from Basque Government [PhD grant number PRE-2015-1-0394] and [project number IT986-16], and from the University of Granada (‘Plan propio - Programa de Intensificación de la Investigación’).