Detection of motional ground state population of a trapped ion using delayed pulses

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates an improved method using delayed pulses in STIRAP to efficiently detect and manipulate the motional ground state of a trapped ion, enhancing precision in quantum measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel delayed pulse STIRAP technique with large detuning for better motional state detection in trapped ions, applicable to quantum computing and spectroscopy.

Findings

STIRAP with delayed pulses outperforms stimulated Raman Rabi pulses for thermal states.

Large detuning (>200 times linewidth) makes STIRAP suitable for non-fluorescing atoms.

The method enables accurate measurement of motional state overlaps and ion temperature.

Abstract

Efficient preparation and detection of the motional state of trapped ions is important in many experiments ranging from quantum computation to precision spectroscopy. We investigate the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique for the manipulation of motional states in a trapped ion system. The presented technique uses a Raman coupling between two hyperfine ground states in $^{25}$Mg$^+$, implemented with delayed pulses, which removes a single phonon independent of the initial motional state. We show that for a thermal state the STIRAP population transfer is more efficient than a stimulated Raman Rabi pulse on a motional sideband. In contrast to previous implementations, a large detuning of more than 200 times the natural linewidth of the transition is used. This approach renders STIRAP suitable for atoms in which resonant laser fields would populate fluorescing excited states and thus impede the STIRAP process. We use the technique to measure the wavefunction overlap of excited motional states with the motional ground state. This is an important application for photon recoil spectroscopy and other force sensing applications that utilize the high sensitivity of the motional state of trapped ions to external fields. Furthermore, a determination of the ground state population enables a simple measurement of the ion's temperature.