After Doppler cooling, ions often form Coulomb crystals in the trap.  This unusual state of matter allows an assembly of ions to be treated as a single quantum mechanical system. Coulomb crystals are used in many types of experiments with trapped ions because they have very well controlled properties, for example, the ions are well isolated from the environment and do not interact with each other except through the Coulomb interaction, which ensures that they remain far apart from each other. The structure is very stable and in some cases the quantum states of individual ions can be manipulated.

A short review of ion Coulomb crystals and their applications is given in reference [1].

 

ICC

References:

[1]  Thompson R C. Ion Coulomb crystalsContemporary Physics. 2015;56: 63-79. doi: 10.1080/00107514.2014.989715.

[2]  Mavadia S, Goodwin JF, Stutter G, Bharadia S, Crick D R, Segal D M, Thompson R C. Control of the conformations of ion Coulomb crystals in a Penning trapNature Communications. 2013;4: 2571. doi: 10.1038/ncomms3571. 

[3] Goodwin J F, Brown B J, Stutter G, Dale H, Thompson R C, Rudolph T. Trapped-ion quantum error-correcting protocols using only global operationsPhysical Review A. 2015;92(3): 032314. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevA.92.032314.

[4]  Stutter G, Hrmo P, Jarlaud V, Joshi M K, Goodwin J F, Thompson R C. Sideband cooling of small ion Coulomb crystals in a Penning trapJournal of Modern Optics. 2018;65(5-6): 549-559. doi: 10.1080/09500340.2017.1376719.

 

 

Click here to return to the main research page.

Get in touch

For all your ion trapping needs

004/006 Huxley Building,
Imperial College London,
London
SW7 2AZ