Extreme-ultraviolet spectroscopy using quantum logic: a feasibility study for singly-ionized helium

Abstract

Extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) spectroscopy represents an important new direction in precision physics, with potential applications ranging from the metrology of fundamental constants to tests of physics beyond the Standard Model. However, the application of quantum control methods for precision spectroscopy remains an open challenge in the XUV range. Here we present a novel quantum logic (QL) spectroscopy method for precision spectroscopy of weak XUV transitions, and numerically validate its feasibility for the $1S-2S$ transition at 40.81\,eV in singly-ionized helium (He${}^{+}$). We propose a scheme based on a single He${}^{+}$ ion co-trapped with a Be${}^{+}$ ion in a Paul trap, and He${}^{+}$ excitation with pairs of frequency-comb (FC) laser pulses upconverted to the XUV via High-Harmonic Generation (HHG). We investigate a nondestructive QL scheme to detect $1S-2S$ excitation, and compare its performance with a destructive readout based on state-selective ionization. Phase coherence of the XUV light is modelled and an optical cavity is used to filter the FC pulses prior to HHG. We model the motional excitation dynamics of trapped ions outside the Lamb-Dicke regime, and numerically validate a scheme we proposed in \cite{Grundeman} to cancel the first-order Doppler broadening and the recoil shift by synchronizing the ion's secular period with the time delay between the two excitation pulses. We show that precision spectroscopy of the $1S-2S$ transition in He${}^{+}$ at the 10 kHz level is feasible, for improved tests of quantum electrodynamics (QED), a measurement of the Rydberg constant $R_{\infty }$ independent of hydrogen measurements, or an improved determination of the alpha particle and helion charge radii. The proposed method may also be applied to XUV spectroscopy of other ions outside the Lamb-Dicke regime.

26 pages, 19 figures