Collisional cooling of light ions by co-trapped heavy atoms

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate cooling of trapped ions by collisions with co-trapped, higher mass neutral atoms. It is shown that the lighter ${}^{39}$K${}^{+}$ ions, created by ionizing ${}^{39}$K atoms in a magneto-optical trap (MOT), when trapped in an ion trap and subsequently allowed to cool by collisions with ultracold, heavier ${}^{85}$Rb atoms in a MOT, exhibit a longer trap lifetime than without the localized ${}^{85}$Rb MOT atoms. A similar cooling of trapped ${}^{85}$Rb${}^{+}$ ions by ultracold ${}^{133}$Cs atoms in a MOT is also demonstrated in a different experimental configuration to validate this mechanism of ion cooling by localized and centered ultracold neutral atoms. Our results suggest that cooling of ions by localized cold atoms holds for any mass ratio, thereby enabling studies on a wider class of atom-ion systems irrespective of their masses.

5 pages (+ 5 pages of Supplementary Material), 4 figures (+ 4 figures in the Supplementary Material)

References in corpus (7)

• Many-Body Physics with Ultracold Gases
• A trapped single ion inside a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Power-Law Distributions for a Trapped Ion Interacting with a Classical Buffer Gas
• Dynamics of a ground-state cooled ion colliding with ultra-cold atoms
• Kinetics of a single trapped ion in an ultracold buffer gas
• Buffer-gas cooling of a single ion in a multipole radio frequency trap beyond the critical mass ratio
• Non-destructive detection of ions using atom-cavity collective strong coupling

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• Cooling of trapped ions by resonant charge exchange
• Dynamics of a trapped ion in a quantum gas: effects of particle statistics
• Trapping Single Ions and Coulomb Crystals with Light Fields
• Interaction potentials and ultracold scattering cross sections for the ${}^7$Li${}^{+}$-${}^7$Li ion-atom system
• Measurement of charge-exchange between Na and \ce{Ca+} in a hybrid trap
• Minimizing rf-induced excess micromotion of a trapped ion with the help of ultracold atoms
• Interactions of Ions and Ultracold Neutral Atom Ensembles in Composite Optical Dipole Traps: Developments and Perspectives
• The energy distribution of an ion in a radiofrequency trap interacting with a nonuniform neutral buffer gas
• A versatile apparatus for simultaneous trapping of multiple species of ultracold atoms and ions to enable studies of low energy collisions and cold chemistry