Sympathetic cooling schemes for separately trapped ions coupled via image currents

Cooling of particles to mK-temperatures is essential for a variety of experiments with trapped charged particles. However, many species of interest lack suitable electronic transitions for direct laser cooling. We study theoretically the remote sympathetic cooling of a single proton with laser-cooled Be-9(+) in a double-Penning-trap system. We investigate three different cooling schemes and find, based on analytical calculations and numerical simulations, that two of them are capable of achieving proton temperatures of about 10 mK with cooling times on the order of 10 s. In contrast, established methods such as feedback-enhanced resistive cooling with image-current detectors are limited to about 1 K in 100 s. Since the studied techniques are applicable to any trapped charged particle and allow spatial separation between the target ion and the cooling species, they enable a variety of precision measurements based on trapped charged particles to be performed at improved sampling rates and with reduced systematic uncertainties.

Automated summary

This article focuses on the remote sympathetic cooling of a single proton with laser-cooled Be-9(+) ions. Through analytical calculations and numerical simulations, two cooling schemes capable of achieving proton temperatures of about 10 mK in short cooling times are identified. These techniques allow for improved sampling rates and reduced systematic uncertainties in precision measurements based on trapped charged particles.