# Closed-cycle, low-vibration 4 K cryostat for ion traps and other applications

## TL;DR

This paper presents a novel low-vibration, closed-cycle 4 K cryostat with high cooling power and vibration suppression, enabling advanced ion trap and optical clock experiments in cryogenic environments.

## Contribution

The development of a low-vibration, high-cooling-power cryostat with effective vibration decoupling and ultra-high vacuum for ion trap and optical clock applications.

## Key findings

- Achieved lowest vibration levels for a closed-cycle cryostat at 10 nm peak amplitude.
- Maintained positional stability of 4 K elements within a few micrometers after thermal cycling.
- Successfully operated at ultra-high vacuum of 10^{-15} mbar in a cryogenic environment.

## Abstract

In-vacuo cryogenic environments are ideal for applications requiring both low temperatures and extremely low particle densities. This enables reaching long storage and coherence times for example in ion traps, essential requirements for experiments with highly charged ions, quantum computation, and optical clocks. We have developed a novel cryostat continuously refrigerated with a pulse-tube cryocooler and providing the lowest vibration level reported for such a closed-cycle system with 1 W cooling power for a <5 K experiment. A decoupling system suppresses vibrations from the cryocooler by three orders of magnitude down to a level of 10 nm peak amplitudes in the horizontal plane. Heat loads of about 40 W (at 45 K) and 1 W (at 4 K) are transferred from an experimental chamber, mounted on an optical table, to the cryocooler through a vacuum-insulated massive 120 kg inertial copper pendulum. The 1.4 m long pendulum allows installation of the cryocooler in a separate, acoustically isolated machine room. In the laser laboratory, we measured the residual vibrations using an interferometric setup. The positioning of the 4 K elements is reproduced to better than a few micrometer after a full thermal cycle to room temperature. Extreme high vacuum on the $10^{-15}$ mbar level is achieved. In collaboration with the Max-Planck-Intitut f\"ur Kernphysik (MPIK), such a setup is now in operation at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for a next-generation optical clock experiment using highly charged ions.