An ion trap built with photonic crystal fibre technology

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel ion trap fabricated using photonic crystal fibre techniques, enabling high optical access and small-scale structures, demonstrated by cooling a single ion to its quantum ground state.

Contribution

It introduces a new fabrication method for ion traps based on photonic crystal fibre technology, offering a straightforward approach for small-scale, high-access traps.

Findings

Successfully cooled a single ion to the quantum ground state

Measured a heating rate of 787 quanta/sec from the ground state

Demonstrated the basic functionality of the fibre-based ion trap

Abstract

We demonstrate a surface-electrode ion trap fabricated using techniques transferred from the manufacture of photonic-crystal fibres. This provides a relatively straightforward route for realizing traps with an electrode structure on the 100 micron scale with high optical access. We demonstrate the basic functionality of the trap by cooling a single ion to the quantum ground state, allowing us to measure a heating rate from the ground state of 787(24) quanta/s. Variation of the fabrication procedure used here may provide access to traps in this geometry with trap scales between 100 um and 10 um.