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Background-free detection of trapped ions

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Abstract

We demonstrate a Doppler cooling and detection scheme for ions with low-lying D levels which almost entirely suppresses scattered laser light background, while retaining a high fluorescence signal and efficient cooling. We cool a single ion with a laser on the \(^{2}\mathrm{S}_{\mbox{\tiny$1/2$}}\leftrightarrow {^{2}\mathrm{P}}_{\mbox{\tiny$1/2$}}\) transition as usual, but repump via the \(^{2}\mathrm{P}_{\mbox{\tiny$3/2$}}\) level. By filtering out light on the cooling transition and detecting only the fluorescence from the \(^{2}\mathrm{P}_{\mbox{\tiny$3/2$}}\rightarrow {^{2}\mathrm{S}}_{\mbox{\tiny$1/2$}}\) decays, we suppress the scattered laser light background count rate to 1 s−1 while maintaining a signal of 29000 s−1 with moderate saturation of the cooling transition. This scheme will be particularly useful for experiments where ions are trapped in close proximity to surfaces, such as the trap electrodes in microfabricated ion traps, which leads to high background scatter from the cooling beam.

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Notes

  1. Electron Tubes P25PC.

  2. Andor Luca 285_Mono, USB.

  3. Semrock FF01-387/11-25.

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Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to Sandia National Laboratories for their fabrication of the trap. The optical Bloch equation simulations were implemented using NAG software. We would also like to acknowledge Alice Burrell for the construction of the imaging system, Graham Quelch for laboratory support and Luca Guidoni for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the EPSRC Science and Innovation programme.

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Author notes

  1. D. J. Szwer

    Present address: Department of Physics, University of Durham, Durham, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU, UK

    N. M. Linke, D. T. C. Allcock, D. J. Szwer, C. J. Ballance, T. P. Harty, H. A. Janacek, D. N. Stacey, A. M. Steane & D. M. Lucas

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  1. N. M. Linke
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Correspondence to D. M. Lucas.

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Linke, N.M., Allcock, D.T.C., Szwer, D.J. et al. Background-free detection of trapped ions. Appl. Phys. B 107, 1175–1180 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-011-4870-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-011-4870-z

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