Coherent laser spectroscopy of highly charged ions using quantum logic

Abstract

Precision spectroscopy of atomic systems is an invaluable tool for the advancement of our understanding of fundamental interactions and symmetries. Recently, highly charged ions (HCI) have been proposed for sensitive tests of physics beyond the Standard Model and as candidates for high-accuracy atomic clocks. However, the implementation of these ideas has been hindered by the parts-per-million level spectroscopic accuracies achieved to date. Here, we cool a trapped HCI to the lowest reported temperatures, and introduce coherent laser spectroscopy on HCI with an eight orders of magnitude leap in precision. We probe the forbidden optical transition in ${}^{40}$Ar${}^{13+}$ at 441 nm using quantum-logic spectroscopy and measure both its excited-state lifetime and $g$-factor. Our work ultimately unlocks the potential of HCI, a large, ubiquitous atomic class, for quantum information processing, novel frequency standards, and highly sensitive tests of fundamental physics, such as searching for dark matter candidates or violations of fundamental symmetries.

Accepted manuscript

References in corpus (7)

• An ${}^{27}$Al${}^{+}$ quantum-logic clock with systematic uncertainty below $10^{-18}$
• Enhanced laboratory sensitivity to variation of the fine-structure constant using highly-charged ions
• The Heidelberg compact electron beam ion traps
• Hyperfine structures and Landé $g_J$-factors for $n=2$ states in beryllium-, boron-, carbon-, and nitrogen-like ions from relativistic configuration interaction calculations
• $g$-factor of Boronlike Argon ${}^{40}{\text{Ar}}^{13+}$
• An einzel lens with a diagonal-slit central electrode to combine steering and focusing of a low energy ion beam
• Nuclear recoil correction to the g factor of boron-like argon

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Optical clocks based on the Cf${}^{15+}$ and Cf${}^{17+}$ ions
• Sympathetic cooling of a trapped proton mediated by an LC circuit
• XUV frequency comb operation in an astigmatism-compensated enhancement cavity
• Probing Multiple Electric Dipole Forbidden Optical Transitions in Highly Charged Nickel Ions
• Nonlinearities of King's plot and their dependence on nuclear radii
• Interrogating the temporal coherence of EUV frequency combs with highly charged ions
• Radiative and photon-exchange corrections to New Physics contributions to energy levels in few-electron ions