Ion Traps as a testbed of classical and quantum statistical mechanics

Abstract

The development of statistical mechanics over the last century represents a major advance in the Natural Sciences. It is capable of describing a wide range of phenomena including the properties of phase transitions by reducing the complexity of quantum-many-body systems to simple general principles rooted in statistical methods that hold true in macroscopic systems. These principles apply to a broad range of physical theories, encompassing phenomena that are for example governed by classical, relativistic or quantum physics. While many of these predictions have been confirmed experimentally, the exploration, under highly controlled conditions, of the statistical mechanics of mesoscopic systems and the theoretical prediction of their behavior does still represent a challenge for both theory and experiment. A new avenue towards the controlled exploration of the classical and quantum statistical mechanics of mesoscopic systems has opened up

3D Sisyphus Cooling of Trapped Ions

“…Sisyphus cooling is also applied to a linear string of four ions to obtain a mean energy of 1-3 quanta for all vibrational modes, an approximately order-of-magnitude reduction below Doppler cooled energies. This is used to enable subsequent, efficient sideband laser cooling.Applications of laser-cooled, trapped ions range from quantum information processing [1-6] and spectroscopy and metrology [7-10] to the study of interactions with cold atoms [11][12][13] and the study of few-body "phase transitions" [14][15][16][17][18]. Central to many of these applications is the manipulation of the collective vibrational modes of a string of Coulomb-coupled ions.…”

“…Applications of laser-cooled, trapped ions range from quantum information processing [1][2][3][4][5][6] and spectroscopy and metrology [7][8][9][10] to the study of interactions with cold atoms [11][12][13] and the study of few-body "phase transitions" [14][15][16][17][18]. Central to many of these applications is the manipulation of the collective vibrational modes of a string of Coulomb-coupled ions.…”

Sub-recoil-limit laser cooling via interacting dark-state resonances

“…Laser cooling and trapping have revolutionized the landscape of atomic physics and research in this area has been awarded a number of Nobel prizes during the last two decades [1,2,3,4,5]. Some of the applications that have and will continue to benefit greatly from these advances are atom interferometry [6], atom lithography [7], precision laser spectroscopy [8], quantum information processes [9], measurement of ultracold chemical reactions [10], and study of few-body phase transitions [11,12,13,14].…”