Optically induced structural phase transitions in ion Coulomb crystals
نویسندگان
چکیده
Peter Horak,1 Aurélien Dantan,2 and Michael Drewsen2 1Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom 2QUANTOP, Danish National Research Foundation Center for Quantum Optics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Aarhus, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark (Received 14 February 2012; revised manuscript received 10 August 2012; published 31 October 2012)
منابع مشابه
Exploring structural phase transitions of ion crystals
Phase transitions have been a research focus in many-body physics over past decades. Cold ions, under strong Coulomb repulsion, provide a repealing paradigm of exploring phase transitions in stable confinement by electromagnetic field. We demonstrate various conformations of up to sixteen laser-cooled (40)Ca(+) ion crystals in a home-built surface-electrode trap, where besides the usually menti...
متن کاملSpin Peierls quantum phase transitions in Coulomb crystals.
The spin Peierls instability describes a structural transition of a crystal due to strong magnetic interactions. Here, we demonstrate that cold Coulomb crystals of trapped ions provide an experimental test bed in which to study this complex many-body problem and to access extreme regimes where the instability is triggered by quantum fluctuations alone. We present a consistent analysis based on ...
متن کاملObservation of a structural transition for Coulomb crystals in a linear Paul trap.
A structural transition for laser cooled ion Coulomb crystals in a linear Paul trap just above the stability limit of parametrically resonant excitation of bulk plasma modes has been observed. In contrast to the usual spheroidal shell structures present below the stability limit, the ions arrange in a "string-of-disks" configuration. The spheroidal envelopes of the string-of-disks structures ar...
متن کاملStructural properties of two-component coulomb crystals in linear paul traps.
We report on structural properties of two-component Coulomb crystals in a linear Paul trap. The crystals consist of two laser cooled ion species, 24Mg+ and 40Ca+. The lighter 24Mg+ ions form an inner cylindrical crystal structure surprisingly similar to that of an infinitely long single component crystal, while the outermost shell of the surrounding 40Ca+ ions have a spheroidal shape, which is ...
متن کاملPrecise experimental investigation of eigenmodes in a planar ion crystal.
The accurate characterization of eigenmodes and eigenfrequencies of two-dimensional ion crystals provides the foundation for the use of such structures for quantum simulation purposes. We present a combined experimental and theoretical study of two-dimensional ion crystals. We demonstrate that standard pseudopotential theory accurately predicts the positions of the ions and the location of stru...
متن کامل