Detection of motional ground state population of a trapped ion using delayed pulses

authored by: Florian Gebert, Yong Wan, Fabian Wolf, Jan C. Heip, Piet Oliver Schmidt
Abstract: Efficient preparation and detection of the motional state of trapped ions is important in many experiments ranging from quantum computation to precision spectroscopy. We investigate the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique for the manipulation of motional states in a trapped ion system. The presented technique uses a Raman coupling between two hyperfine ground states in ²⁵Mg⁺, implemented with delayed pulses, which removes a single phonon independent of the initial motional state. We show that for a thermal probability distribution of motional states the STIRAP population transfer is more efficient than a stimulated Raman Rabi pulse on a motional sideband. In contrast to previous implementations, a large detuning of more than 200 times the natural linewidth of the transition is used. This approach renders STIRAP suitable for atoms in which resonant laser fields would populate nearby fluorescing excited states and thus impede the STIRAP process. We use the technique to measure the wavefunction overlap of excited motional states with the motional ground state. This is an important application for force sensing applications using trapped ions, such as photon recoil spectroscopy, in which the signal is proportional to the depletion of motional ground state population. Furthermore, a determination of the ground state population enables a simple measurement of the ion's temperature.
Organisation(s): Institute of Quantum Optics
CRC 1227 Designed Quantum States of Matter (DQ-mat)
External Organisation(s): National Metrology Institute of Germany (PTB)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Type: Article
Journal: New Journal of Physics
Volume: 18
ISSN: 1367-2630
Publication date: 14.01.2016
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Physics and Astronomy(all)
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/18/1/013037 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{8eeb2351bdd5492986ff827512f35e69,
title = "Detection of motional ground state population of a trapped ion using delayed pulses",
abstract = "Efficient preparation and detection of the motional state of trapped ions is important in many experiments ranging from quantum computation to precision spectroscopy. We investigate the stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP) technique for the manipulation of motional states in a trapped ion system. The presented technique uses a Raman coupling between two hyperfine ground states in 25Mg+, implemented with delayed pulses, which removes a single phonon independent of the initial motional state. We show that for a thermal probability distribution of motional states the STIRAP population transfer is more efficient than a stimulated Raman Rabi pulse on a motional sideband. In contrast to previous implementations, a large detuning of more than 200 times the natural linewidth of the transition is used. This approach renders STIRAP suitable for atoms in which resonant laser fields would populate nearby fluorescing excited states and thus impede the STIRAP process. We use the technique to measure the wavefunction overlap of excited motional states with the motional ground state. This is an important application for force sensing applications using trapped ions, such as photon recoil spectroscopy, in which the signal is proportional to the depletion of motional ground state population. Furthermore, a determination of the ground state population enables a simple measurement of the ion's temperature.",
keywords = "adiabatic state manipulation, motional state population, STIRAP, trapped ions",
author = "Florian Gebert and Yong Wan and Fabian Wolf and Heip, {Jan C.} and Schmidt, {Piet Oliver}",
year = "2016",
month = jan,
day = "14",
doi = "10.1088/1367-2630/18/1/013037",
language = "English",
volume = "18",
journal = "New Journal of Physics",
issn = "1367-2630",
publisher = "IOP Publishing Ltd.",
number = "1",
}