Ion Coulomb crystals: a tool for studying ion processes

Rotational dynamics of a diatomic molecular ion in a Paul trap

“…As expected from Eqs. (21), one sees that in the presence of a permanent dipole moment, the trajectory of the center of mass does not correspond to the Mathieu equation, which is obtained for µ = 0. For such a strength of the trapping field and initial orientation, the deviation is significant enough to be observable in the x direction.…”

“…[18][19][20] In this regard, large scale studies of trapped ions in large scales, in the form of Coulomb crystals, have become feasible, with promising developments for large-scale quantum simulations and quantum computations. 11,[21][22][23] While there have been many experimental studies using molecular ions, on the theoretical side, there have been few attempts to treat them differently than atomic ions, at least with respect to their interaction with the trapping electric field. In particular, the rotation of the molecular ions has been considered mostly with respect to a coupling with an external laser field.…”

Ultra-cold ion–atom collisions: near resonant charge exchange

“…Recent experiments have been directed to observing ultracold atomic systems in which electric charges may play an analogous role: these include ultracold plasmas [12], ultracold Rydberg gases [13,14] and direct ionization experiments in BEC [15,16]. Observations of atomic and molecular collision processes involving ions at low energies can also be performed using Coulomb crystals [17], where an array of trapped atomic ions or sympathetically cooled molecular ions [18] is used as a cold target buffer because of its spatial localization and the low translational temperatures of 10 mK.…”

Isotope shifts of the4s2S01→4s5pP1Mortensen1, Lindballe2, Jensen3 et al. 2004Phys. Rev. ASelf Cite500350View full textAdd to dashboardCite

“…Though in the presented experimental scheme, near-resonant charge exchange collisions were used to gain information about the ion number, it is not a requirement for the technique for these to be used. Actually, the technique should be applicable to many atomic species as long as some laser cooled ions are simultaneously trapped and can sympathetically cool the species of interest into a Coulomb crystal [17,19,20]. From the spatial organization of the observable laser cooled species, one can easily deduce the number of the, e.g., nonfluorescing ions of interest.…”