Resistive cooling of highly charged ions in a Penning trap to a fluid-like state

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that resistive cooling in a cryogenic Penning trap can effectively thermalize large ensembles of highly charged ions, leading to a fluid-like state and potential ion crystallization without laser cooling.

Contribution

It provides new experimental evidence that resistive cooling results in exponential thermalization and fluid-like transition in highly charged ion ensembles, independent of initial energy.

Findings

Cooling time constants are independent of initial ion energy.

Transition to fluid-like state occurs below approximately 14 K.

Final ion temperature achieved is 7.5 K.

Abstract

We have performed a detailed experimental study of resistive cooling of large ensembles of highly charged ions such as Ar$^{13+}$ in a cryogenic Penning trap. Different from the measurements reported in [M. Vogel et al., Phys. Rev. A, 043412 (2014)], we observe purely exponential cooling behavior when conditions are chosen to allow collisional thermalization of the ions. We provide evidence that in this situation, resistive cooling time constants and final temperatures are independent of the initial ion energy, and that the cooling time constant of a thermalized ion ensemble is identical to the single-ion cooling time constant. For sufficiently high ion number densities, our measurements show discontinuities in the spectra of motional resonances which indicate a transition of the ion ensemble to a fluid-like state when cooled to temperatures below approximately 14 K. With the final ion temperature presently being 7.5 K, ions of the highest charge states are expected to form ion crystals by mere resistive cooling, in particular not requiring the use of laser cooling.