Efficient Photoionization-Loading of Trapped Cadmium Ions with Ultrafast Pulses

Abstract

Atomic cadmium ions are loaded into radiofrequency ion traps by photoionization of atoms in a cadmium vapor with ultrafast laser pulses. The photoionization is driven through an intermediate atomic resonance with a frequency-quadrupled mode-locked Ti:Sapphire laser that produces pulses of either 100 fsec or 1 psec duration at a central wavelength of 229 nm. The large bandwidth of the pulses photoionizes all velocity classes of the Cd vapor, resulting in high loading efficiencies compared to previous ion trap loading techniques. Measured loading rates are compared with a simple theoretical model, and we conclude that this technique can potentially ionize every atom traversing the laser beam within the trapping volume. This may allow the operation of ion traps with lower levels of background pressures and less trap electrode surface contamination. The technique and laser system reported here should be applicable to loading most laser-cooled ion species.

11 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Scaling and Suppression of Anomalous Quantum Decoherence in Ion Traps
• Ion Trap in a Semiconductor Chip
• T-junction ion trap array for two-dimensional ion shuttling, storage and manipulation
• Electrodynamically trapped Yb+ ions for quantum information processing
• Atom counting in ultra-cold gases using photoionisation and ion detection

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Ion-trap measurements of electric-field noise near surfaces
• Microfabricated Ion Traps
• Magneto-optical Trapping of Cadmium
• Photoionization and Photoelectric Loading of Barium Ion Traps
• Spectroscopy of a synthetic trapped ion qubit
• Efficient photoionization for barium ion trapping using a dipole-allowed resonant two-photon transition
• Resonance enhanced isotope-selective photoionization of YbI for ion trap loading
• Laser ablation production of Ba, Ca, Dy, Er, La, Lu, and Yb ions
• Photoionisation loading of large Sr+ ion clouds with ultrafast pulses
• Cavity-enhanced photoionization of an ultracold rubidium beam for application in focused ion beams
• Microfabrication techniques for trapped ion quantum information processing
• Development and Characterization of a 171Yb+ Miniature Ion Trap Frequency Standard