Laser cooling of trapped ytterbium ions using a four-level optical-excitation scheme
- Resource Type
- Authors
- D. Schnier; Chr. Tamm; A. P. Levick; Patrick Gill; H. A. Klein; A. S. Bell
- Source
- Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics. 44(1)
- Subject
- Physics
Resolved sideband cooling
Metastability
Laser cooling
Quadrupole
Resonance
Physics::Atomic Physics
Atomic physics
Ground state
Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Energy (signal processing)
Ion
- Language
- ISSN
- 1050-2947
We demonstrate laser cooling of $^{172}\mathrm{Yb}^{+}$ ions in a rf quadrupole trap using an alternative optical-excitation scheme. The metastable 4${\mathit{f}}^{14}$5${\mathit{d}}^{2}$${\mathit{D}}_{3/2}$ state of ${\mathrm{Yb}}^{+}$, to which ions decay if the resonance (cooling) transition is driven, is depleted by driving an optical transition at a wavelength of 935 nm, which is much more attractive than the 2.438 \ensuremath{\mu}m radiation used previously. This couples the metastable state to a fourth energy level from which the ions decay rapidly to the ground state. Fluorescence line shapes of the cooling transition indicate that small numbers of ${\mathrm{Yb}}^{+}$ ions were cooled in this way to kinetic temperatures below 1 K.