Two-phase driving of a linear radio-frequency ion trap

TL;DR

This paper introduces a two-phase driving method for linear radio-frequency ion traps, reducing axial micromotion and enabling effective trapping and cooling of Ytterbium ions, improving trap performance.

Contribution

The authors present a novel two-phase RF driving technique for linear Paul traps, addressing limitations of traditional single-phase methods.

Findings

Successfully trapped and cooled Ytterbium ion chains

Reduced axial micromotion amplitude

Demonstrated effective two-phase RF driving

Abstract

A linear radio-frequency Paul trap is traditionally driven with one diagonal pair of electrodes grounded and the other connected to a high-voltage radio-frequency source. This method simplifies impedance matching of the voltage source to the trap. However, for several architectures it leads to increasing the axial micromotion amplitude, for example, when the capacitance between radio-frequency and end-cap electrodes is not negligible. Here, we present a technique to generate two high-voltage radio-frequency signals \SI{180}{\degree} out of phase to drive a linear Paul trap with opposite voltages between neighbouring electrodes. Using this, we have successfully trapped and cooled a chain of Ytterbium ions in a linear radio-frequency Paul trap.