Fast accumulation of ions in a dual trap

¹ Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, PIIM, UMR 7345 - 13397 Marseille, France

Received: 18 May 2015
Accepted: 22 June 2015

Abstract

Transporting charged particles between different traps has become an important feature in high-precision spectroscopy experiments of different types. In many experiments in atomic and molecular physics, the optical probing of the ions is not carried out at the same location as the creation or state preparation. In our double linear radio-frequency trap, we have implemented a fast protocol allowing to shuttle large ion clouds very efficiently between traps, in times shorter than a millisecond. Moreover, our shuttling protocol is a one-way process, allowing to add ions to an existing cloud without loss of the already trapped sample. This feature makes accumulation possible, resulting in the creation of large ion clouds. Experimental results show that ion clouds of large size are reached with laser cooling; however, the described mechanism does not rely on any cooling process.