Zero-point cooling and low heating of trapped 111Cd+ ions -: art. no. 043408

We report on ground-state laser cooling of single Cd-111(+) ions confined in radio-frequency (Paul) traps. Heating rates of trapped ion motion are measured for two different trapping geometries and electrode materials, where no effort was made to shield the electrodes from the atomic Cd source. The low measured heating rates suggest that trapped Cd-111(+) ions may be well suited for experiments involving quantum control of atomic motion, including applications in quantum information science.