Increase of barium ion-trap lifetime via photodissociation

Abstract

The lifetime of Ba${}^{+}$ ions confined in a Paul trap is found, under typical conditions, to be limited by chemical reactions with residual background gas. An integrated ion trap and time-of-flight mass spectrometer are used to analyze the reactions of the trapped Ba${}^{+}$ ions with three common gases in an ultrahigh vacuum system (H${}_2$, CO${}_2$ and H${}_2$O). It is found that the products of these reactions can all be photodissociated by a single ultraviolet laser at 225~nm, thereby allowing the recovery of the Ba${}^{+}$ ions and leading to an increase of the effective trap lifetime. For a Coulomb crystal, the lifetime increased from roughly 6~hours to 2~days at room temperature. It is suggested that higher enhancement factors are possible in systems with stronger traps. In addition, photodissociation wavelengths for other common trapped ion systems are provided.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

References in corpus (22)

• Trapped-Ion Quantum Computing: Progress and Challenges
• High-fidelity quantum logic gates using trapped-ion hyperfine qubits
• High-fidelity two-qubit quantum logic gates using trapped calcium-43 ions
• High-Fidelity Universal Gate Set for ${}^9$Be${}^{+}$ Ion Qubits
• Integrated optical multi-ion quantum logic
• High-fidelity laser-free universal control of two trapped ion qubits
• High-Fidelity Bell-State Preparation with ${}^{40}$Ca${}^{+}$ Optical Qubits
• Micromotion-induced Limit to Atom-Ion Sympathetic Cooling in Paul Traps
• Cryogenic Trapped-Ion System for Large Scale Quantum Simulation
• Normal modes of trapped ions in the presence of anharmonic trap potentials
• High fidelity manipulation of a qubit built from a synthetic nucleus
• Cryogenic setup for trapped ion quantum computing
• Neutral gas sympathetic cooling of an ion in a Paul trap
• Scalable Loading of a Two-Dimensional Trapped-Ion Array
• A cryogenic radio-frequency ion trap for quantum logic spectroscopy of highly charged ions
• Dual-Species, Multi-Qubit Logic Primitives for Ca+/Sr+ Trapped-Ion Crystals
• Sympathetic cooling and detection of a hot trapped ion by a cold one
• Molecular ion trap-depletion spectroscopy of BaCl${}^{+}$
• Blue-sky bifurcation of ion energies and the limits of neutral-gas sympathetic cooling of trapped ions
• Reversing Hydride Ion Formation in Quantum Information Experiments with Be${}^{+}$
• Measurement of the Coulomb Logarithm in a Radio-Frequency Paul Trap
• Vibronic spectroscopy of sympathetically cooled CaH${}^{+}$