Electric trapping and circuit cooling of charged nanorotors

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how charged nanorotors can be cooled and controlled using electric circuits, specifically through coupling their motion to RLC circuits in ion traps, enabling effective resistive cooling.

Contribution

It introduces a method to couple the dynamics of charged nanorotors to electric circuits and demonstrates all-electric cooling in ion traps with numerical simulations.

Findings

Cooling rates depend on circuit configuration

Quadrupole ion traps are effective for electric cooling

Sequential rotational and translational cooling is achievable

Abstract

The motion of charged particles can be interfaced with electric circuitry via the current induced in nearby pick-up electrodes. Here we show how the rotational and translational dynamics of levitated objects with arbitrary charge distributions can be coupled to a circuit and how the latter acts back on the particle motion. The ensuing cooling rates in series and parallel RLC circuits are determined, demonstrating that quadrupole ion traps are well suited for implementing all-electric cooling. We derive the effective macromotion potential for general trap geometries and demonstrate numerically how consecutive rotational and translational resistive cooling of a microscale particle can be achieved in linear Paul traps.