Simulation of motion of many ions in a linear Paul trap

0524895 - ÚPT 2021 RIV SG eng J - Journal Article
Oral, Martin - Číp, Ondřej - Slodička, L.
Simulation of motion of many ions in a linear Paul trap.
International Journal of Modern Physics. A. Roč. 34, č. 36 (2019), č. článku 1942003. ISSN 0217-751X. E-ISSN 1793-656X.
[Conference on Charged Particle Optics (CPO) /10./, International Conference on Computational Accelerator Physics (/ICAP) /13./. Key West, 17.10.2018-21.10.2018]
R&D Projects: GA TA ČR(CZ) TE01020118; GA MŠMT(CZ) LO1212; GA MŠMT ED0017/01/01
Institutional support: RVO:68081731
Keywords : linear ion traps * atomic clock * electric RF fields * simulation of electrostatic fields * finite element method * multipole field expansion * ion trajectories * particle tracing * Coulomb crystals
OECD category: Optics (including laser optics and quantum optics)
Impact factor: 1.486, year: 2019
Method of publishing: Limited access
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217751X1942003X

The quadrupole linear Paul trap is one of the key instruments in building highly stable atomic clocks. However, a frequency reference based on a single trapped ion is limited in stability due to the time needed for the interrogation cycle which cannot be further shortened. A promising strategy is the utilization of multiple trapped ions. The ions of the same kind then repulse each other with the Coulomb force, which is countered by the ponderomotive force of the time depended field in the trap. A few ions form a chain along the axis of a linear Paul trap. Adding more ions (a few tens or hundreds) gives rise to Coulomb crystals. We created an efficient simulation code which calculates the motion of such collections of ions in quasi-static radiofrequency fields of real linear quadrupole traps (including the micromotion). We include a model for laser cooling of the ions. The simulation tool can be used to study the formation and the dynamics of Coulomb crystals under conditions corresponding to various experimental setups.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0309127