Buffer gas cooling of ions in time-dependent traps using ultracold atoms

Abstract

For exploration of quantum effects with hybrid atom-ion systems, reaching ultracold temperatures is the major limiting factor. In this work, we present results on numerical simulations of trapped ion buffer gas cooling using an ultracold atomic gas in a large number of experimentally realistic scenarios. We explore the suppression of micromotion-induced heating effects through optimization of trap parameters for various radio-frequency (rf) traps and rf driving schemes including linear and octupole traps, digital Paul traps, rotating traps and hybrid optical/rf traps. We find that very similar ion energies can be reached in all of them even when considering experimental imperfections that cause so-called excess micromotion. Moreover we look into a quantum description of the system and show that quantum mechanics cannot save the ion from micromotion-induced heating in an atom-ion collision. The results suggest that buffer gas cooling can be used to reach close to the ion's groundstate of motion and is even competitive when compared to some sub-Doppler cooling techniques such as Sisyphus cooling. Thus, buffer gas cooling is a viable alternative for ions that are not amenable to laser cooling, a result that may be of interest for studies into quantum chemistry and precision spectroscopy.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Trap-assisted complexes in cold atom-ion collisions
• Generation of rotational ground state HD${}^{+}$ ions in an ion trap using a resonance-enhanced threshold photoionization process
• Ultracold ion-atom experiments: cooling, chemistry, and quantum effects
• Motional state analysis of a trapped ion by ultra-narrowband composite pulses
• Exploring atom-ion Feshbach resonances below the s-wave limit
• Chaotic scattering and heating in cold ion-atom collisions: two sides of the same coin
• Trap-induced atom-ion complexes: a time-independent approach
• Ultracold collisions of a neutral atom with a trapped ion in 1D
• Ion-kinetic-energy sampling in a 22-pole trap using ring-electrode evaporation