Superstatistical velocity distributions of cold trapped ions in molecular-dynamics simulations

We present a realistic molecular-dynamics treatment of laser-cooled ions in radio-frequency ion traps which avoids previously made simplifications such as modeling laser cooling as a friction force and combining individual heating mechanisms into a single effective heating force. Based on this implementation, we show that infrequent energetic collisions of single ions with background gas molecules lead to pronounced heating of the entire ion ensemble and a time-varying secular ensemble temperature, which manifests itself in a superstatistical time-averaged velocity distribution of the ions. The effect of this finding on the experimental determination of ion temperatures and rate constants for cold chemical reactions is discussed.