Freiburg 2019 – scientific programme

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FM: Fall Meeting

FM 17: Quantum Computation: Simulation I

FM 17.5: Talk

Monday, September 23, 2019, 17:30–17:45, 1010

Ions and atoms in optical dipole traps: a new platform for quantum simulations — Pascal Weckesser, Fabian Thielemann, Isabelle Lindemann, Florian Hasse, Tobias Schaetz, and •Leon Karpa — Physikalisches Institut, Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg, Germany

The combination of ions and neutral atoms has been brought forward as a candidate for realizing novel quantum simulations by making use of their advantageous interaction. One of the most sought after goals in the recently emerged field studying cold ion-atom collisions is gaining access to a quantum dominated regime of ion-atom interactions. So far, experiments in hybrid systems combining ions in Paul traps and optically trapped atoms show that the energy scales in the combined system are limited to temperatures on the order of mK, even in the case of ultracold ensembles. This limitation is the consequence of micromotion-induced heating inherent to all radiofrequency traps.

Here we present a new approach based on all-optical trapping of ions and atoms which avoids the use of any radiofrequency techniques, and show sympathetic cooling of ions to sub-Doppler temperatures. Together with our recent findings demonstrating optical trapping of ion Coulomb crystals and long lifetimes on the order of seconds, these results pave the way to ultracold ion-atom interactions, a novel class of quantum simulations and investigations of structural quantum phase transitions.