Trapping, cooling, and photodissociation analysis of state-selected H$\_2^{+}$ ions produced by (3+1) multiphoton ionization

Abstract

We report on the production of cold, state-selected H${}_2^{+}$ molecular ions in a linear RF trap. The ions are produced by (3+1) resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionisation (REMPI) of H${}_2$, and sympathetically cooled by laser-cooled Be${}^{+}$ ions. After demonstrating and characterizing the REMPI process, we use photodissociation by a deep UV laser at 213~nm to verify the high vibrational purity of the produced H${}_2^{+}$ ion samples. Moreover, the large difference between the photodissociation efficiencies of ions created in the $v=0$ and $v=1$ levels provides a way to detect a $v=0\to 1$ transition. These results pave the way towards high-resolution vibrational spectroscopy of H${}_2^{+}$ for fundamental metrology applications.

References in corpus (5)

• High-precision measurement of the atomic mass of the electron
• Proton-Electron Mass Ratio from Laser Spectroscopy of HD${}^{+}$ at the Part-Per-Trillion Level
• Reversing Hydride Ion Formation in Quantum Information Experiments with Be${}^{+}$
• High-precision spectroscopy of the HD+ molecule at the 1-p.p.b. level
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• Number-Resolved Detection of Dark Ions in Coulomb Crystals
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• Ro-vibrational spin-averaged transitions in the hydrogen molecular ions
• State-Selective Ionization and Trapping of Single H${}_2^{+}$ Ions with (2+1) Multiphoton Ionization