Erlangen 2018 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 5: Precision Spectrosocopy I - trapped ions (joint session A/Q)

Q 5.2: Talk

Monday, March 5, 2018, 11:00–11:15, K 1.016

Trapping of anions for laser cooling — •Pauline Yzombard, Alban Kellerbauer, and Giovanni Cerchiari — Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany

There is only a very small number of anions candidates with an optical dipole-allowed transition between two bound states that are potentially suitable for Doppler laser cooling. Detailed spectroscopic studies were needed to identify a proper candidate [1].

According to our latest results, the La- ion seems promising [2]. But the narrow width of its bound-bound transition implies a long interaction time for the laser cooling to take place. We have developed two traps, a cryogenic Penning trap and a room-temperature linear Paul trap, to trap the anions long enough to apply laser cooling. As the efficient Doppler laser cooling of La- would require pre-cooling, we are currently developing an evaporative cooling step assisted by laser excitation.

One of the main motivations for this work is the importance of an ultra-cold negative plasma for antimatter experiments. The established technique for antihydrogen formation is based on merging antiproton and positron plasmas at low energy. The ability of sympathetically cooling the antiprotons with laser-cooled anions would open the path to new precision measurements with antihydrogen [3].

[1] U.Warring et al. PRL 102 (2009) 043001. [2] E. Jordan and al. PRL 115 (2015) 113001 [3] A. Kellerbauer New J. Phys. 8 (2006) 45. 2005