Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 35: Poster 2
Q 35.55: Poster
Wednesday, March 14, 2012, 16:30–19:00, Poster.I+II
An Ion Trapped in an Optical Lattice — •Martin Enderlein1,2, Thomas Huber1,2, Christian Schneider1,2, Magnus Albert1,2, Michael Zugenmaier1,2, and Tobias Schaetz1,2 — 1Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, 85748 Garching — 2Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 79104 Freiburg
In 2010 we trapped an ion in an optical dipole trap for the first time [1]. Optically trapped ions are promising in several ways: For example to study ultra-cold atom-ion collisions not suffering from micromotion-induced heating and as potentially scalable systems with long-range interaction for quantum simulations.
The motivation for a quantum simulator is to gain insight into complex quantum dynamics (e.g. of a solid-state system) via experimentally simulating the quantum behaviour of interest in another quantum system (e.g. trapped ions). In order to gain genuinely new insights one has to scale these simulations to particle numbers that cannot be handled efficiently on a classical computer. One promising approach to reach scalability is based on micro-arrays of radio-frequency surface traps [2]. An alternative approach might be to combine the advantages of trapped ions with those of (atoms in) optical lattices [2]. Here we report on trapping of an ion in an optical lattice, an important step towards larger systems, e.g. combining atoms and ions. Furthermore, we present a new setup dedicated to optical ion trapping which will allow us to make further progress towards the above-stated goals.
[1] Schneider et al., Nat. Photonics 4 (2010)
[2] Schneider et al., arXiv:1106.2597 (2011)