Hannover 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 18: Precision spectroscopy of atoms and ions IV (with Q)

A 18.7: Vortrag

Dienstag, 19. März 2013, 15:45–16:00, B 305

Few-Photon Spectroscopy of a trapped ion through sensitive recoil detection — •Yong Wan¹, Florian Gebert¹, Boerge Hemmerling², and Piet O. Schmidt¹ — ¹QUEST Inst. for Exp. Quantum Metrology, PTB Braunschweig and Leibniz Univ. of Hannover, Germany — ²Department of Physics, Havard University, Cambridge, MA02138, USA

Traditional laser spectroscopy, e.g. laser-induced fluorescence, allowed us to perform precision spectroscopy with high accuracy. The signal-noise-ratio of this spectroscopy technique is rather limited by the number of photons that can be detected. We present here a highly sensitive spectroscopy technique, which is well-suited in case only a low number of photons or atoms are available. In this scheme, a spectroscopy ion is trapped simultaneously with a single logic ion, which is used for laser cooling and detection of the spectroscopy signal. Starting from the ground state of motion of a common motional mode, photon recoil from probing the spectroscopy transition is detected with high efficiency by the logic ion. We apply spectroscopy pulses synchronized with the motion of the ions in the trap to enhance the sensitivity through resonant driving. This way, we are able to detect scattering of less than 16 photons. We discuss the sensitivity of the experiment and systematic frequency shifts.

The spectroscopy technique discussed is of general interest for high precision spectroscopy and can be applied to various species of atomic and molecular ions. Furthermore, a variation of the technique might be useful for preparation of molecular ions in their internal ground state.