Mass-selective removal of ions from Paul traps using parametric excitation

Abstract

We study a method for mass-selective removal of ions from a Paul trap by parametric excitation. This can be achieved by applying an oscillating electric quadrupole field at twice the secular frequency ${\omega }_{\text{sec}}$ using pairs of opposing electrodes. While excitation near the resonance with the frequency ${\omega }_{\text{sec}}$ only leads to a linear increase of the amplitude with excitation duration, parametric excitation near $2{\omega }_{\text{sec}}$ results in an exponential increase of the amplitude. This enables efficient removal of ions from the trap with modest excitation voltages and narrow bandwidth, therefore substantially reducing the disturbance of ions with other charge-to-mass ratios. We numerically study and compare the mass selectivity of the two methods. In addition, we experimentally show that the barium isotopes with 136 and 137 nucleons can be removed from small ion crystals and ejected out of the trap while keeping ${}^{138}{\text{Ba}}^{+}$ ions Doppler cooled, corresponding to a mass selectivity of better than $\Delta m/m=1/138$. This method can be widely applied to ion trapping experiments without major modifications, since it only requires modulating the potential of the ion trap.

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• Quantum amplification of mechanical oscillator motion
• Preparation and coherent manipulation of pure quantum states of a single molecular ion
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• A far-off-resonance optical trap for a Ba${}^{+}$ ion
• Optical Traps for sympathetic Cooling of Ions with ultracold neutral Atoms
• Floquet-engineered vibrational dynamics in a two-dimensional array of trapped ions
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• Efficient photoionization for barium ion trapping using a dipole-allowed resonant two-photon transition
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• Reactions of Acetonitrile with Trapped, Translationally Cold Acetylene Cations
• Quantum control of continuous systems via nonharmonic potential modulation
• Interactions of Ions and Ultracold Neutral Atom Ensembles in Composite Optical Dipole Traps: Developments and Perspectives
• Exploring atom-ion Feshbach resonances below the s-wave limit
• Ultracold Interactions between Ions and Polar Molecules
• Deterministic preparation of a dual-species two-ion crystal
• Preparing pure ${}^{43}$Ca${}^{+}$ samples in an ion trap with photoionization and parametric excitations
• Observing the dynamics of octupolar structural transitions in trapped-ion clusters
• A single-atom level mechano-optical transducer for ultrasensitive force sensing