Sideband cooling is a well-established technique for preparing trapped ions in the ground state of their motion in the trap.  However, this technique has mainly been used in radiofrequency traps. Its application in Penning traps has been slower, due to the properties of the Penning trap.  In particular, the strong magnetic field gives rise to very large Zeeman shifts and this complicates the atomic level structure, leading to a requirement for many laser frequencies.  Also, the relatively low trapping frequencies available in the Penning trap can lead to a requirement for cooling on multiple sidebands rather than a single one.

Ions that are trapped in a Penning trap and cooled to the ground state of motion have potential applications in areas such as quantum information processing and quantum simulation as well as sympathetic cooling and quantum logic applied to precision measurements with protons and antiprotons in traps.

Content of Sideband Cooling

References: 

[1] Goodwin J F et al. Resolved-sideband laser cooling in a Penning trapPhys. Rev. Lett. 2016;116(14): 143002. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.143002. 

[2] Stutter G et al. 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. 

[3] Hrmo P et al. Sideband cooling of the radial modes of motion of a single ion in a Penning trap. Phys. Rev. A. 2019;100: 043414. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.043414.

 

 

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