Sympathetic cooling of Rb + ions by cold Rb atoms in an ion-neutral hybrid trap

Abstract

Sympathetic cooling of Rb+ ions by cold Rb atoms is studied in an ion-neutral hybrid trap. The effect of a linear Paul trap (LPT) parameter q1, 2 on the sympathetic cooling is studied by measuring the changes in ion number Ni and temperature Ti after interaction with cold atoms. The sympathetic cooling effect is observed with 0.3 ≤ |q1, 2| ≤ 0.8. At the |q1, 2| value of 0.32, ions are cooled from initial (2 010±380) K to (325±35) K and the lifetime of ions is extended from 7 s to 15 s via sympathetic cooling. These findings are very useful for cooling of atomic and molecular ions, especially for the ions without available optical channels.