Measuring the temperature and heating rate of a single ion by imaging

Abstract

We present a technique based on high resolution imaging to measure the absolute temperature and the heating rate of a single ion trapped at the focus of a deep parabolic mirror. We collect the fluorescence light scattered by the ion during laser cooling and image it onto a camera. Accounting for the size of the point-spread function and the magnification of the imaging system, we determine the spatial extent of the ion, from which we infer the mean phonon occupation number in the trap. Repeating such measurements and varying the power or the detuning of the cooling laser, we determine the anomalous heating rate. In contrast to other established schemes for measuring the heating rate, one does not have to switch off the cooling but the ion is always maintained in a state of thermal equilibrium at temperatures close to the Doppler limit.

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Second-order Doppler frequency shifts of trapped ions in a linear Paul trap
• Heating rate measurement and characterization of a prototype surface-electrode trap for optical frequency metrology
• Single Ion Thermal Wave Packet Analyzed Via Time-Of-Flight Detection
• Feedback Cooling and Thermometry of a Single Trapped Ion Using a Knife Edge