Simulation study of ultrahigh-precision single-ion extraction from a linear Paul trap

Abstract

AbstractA detailed simulation study is conducted to explore the possibility of transporting a single ion precisely along a particular design orbit. As a practically useful example, we consider nitrogen ions sympathetically cooled with ultracold calcium ions produced in a linear Paul trap (LPT) by the Doppler laser-cooling technique. A single nitrogen almost completely frozen in the laboratory frame is extracted from the LPT by manipulating the axial potential barriers. A similar idea was recently implemented by Groot-Berning et al. [New J. Phys. 23, 063067 (2021)] to create nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond as a platform for some important quantum technologies. We here perform systematic 3D simulations taking a standard LPT structure into account and figure out the necessary conditions to achieve the ultrahigh-precision irradiation of a single nitrogen onto any target. In addition to the string Coulomb crystal used in the previous work above, we show that even the shell crystalline structure can be employed for our purpose. When several specific conditions are satisfied, a normalized root-mean-squared emittance of ejected nitrogen ions can be made of the order of 10−16 m·rad in transverse dimensions perpendicular to the design orbit.