Mainz 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 31: Poster Session III

A 31.5: Poster

Donnerstag, 9. März 2017, 17:00–19:00, P OG1

Optical trapping of ion crystals — •Yannick Minet, Julian Schmidt, Alexander Lambrecht, Pascal Weckesser, Fabian Thielemann, Markus Debatin, Leon Karpa, and Tobias Schaetz — Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs Universitaet Freiburg, Germany

Trapped cold ion crystals provide a well suited platform for realising quantum simulations due to long-range Coulomb interactions, which allow coupling of electronic and motional states on the quantum level via the crystal phonons [1]. Controling quantum phenomena in Paul traps in higher dimensional crystals is severely affected by rf-driven micromotion. Optical trapping of ions has been proposed as a solution to this limitation while providing versatile trapping geometries, including lattices.
We now demonstrate trapping of ion crystals with up to six Barium ions by an optical dipole trap [2,3] without any rf-fields. We are able to directly observe their Coulomb interaction and resonantly measure the frequencies of normal modes. We discuss the influence of various trapping parameters, such as beam waist, Rayleigh length, laser power, axial confinement by dc electric fields and additional changes in the trapping potential due to interactions between the ions. Finally, we discuss prospects of 2D and 3D quantum simulations in optical lattices.

[1] D.J. Wineland, Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, 1103 (2013)

[2] T. Huber et al., Nat. Comm. 5, 5587 (2014)

[3] A. Lambrecht et al., arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.06429 (2016)