Dynamics of a trapped ion in a quantum gas: effects of particle statistics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how quantum statistics of a surrounding gas influence the dynamics of a trapped ion, revealing that fermionic environments can lead to lower ion energies compared to bosonic ones.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive quantum optical master equation framework including Lamb-shift and extended Fröhlich interactions for ion-gas systems, considering both Bose and Fermi gases.

Findings

Fermionic baths enable lower ionic energies than bosonic baths.

Ion kinetic energy varies with atom-ion scattering length and gas temperature.

Ion dynamics are significantly affected by the quantum statistics of the surrounding gas.

Abstract

We study the quantum dynamics of an ion confined in a radiofrequency trap in interaction with either a Bose or spin-polarized Fermi gas. To this end, we derive quantum optical master equations in the limit of weak coupling and the Lamb-Dicke approximations. For the bosonic bath, we also include the so-called "Lamb-shift" correction to the ion trap due to the coupling to the quantum gas as well as the extended Fr\"ohlich interaction within the Bogolyubov approximation that have been not considered in previous studies. We calculate the ion kinetic energy for various atom-ion scattering lengths as well as gas temperatures by considering the intrinsic micromotion and we analyse the damping of the ion motion in the gas as a function of the gas temperature. We find that the ion's dynamics depends on the quantum statistics of the gas and that a fermionic bath enables to attain lower ionic energies.