European Conference on Trapped Ions (ECTI)

Coulomb crystals, formed by cold trapped ions, represent a leading platform for realizing quantum processors, simulators, and constructing optical atomic clocks. The coupling between collective motion and internal degrees of freedom, resulting in quantum correlations, plays a pivotal role in achieving and enhancing these applications. However, at times, these quantum correlations can also...

Trapped ions are ideal systems for optical atomic clocks and precision tests of fundamental physics. However, the quantum projection noise of the single ion imposes a limit on its stability. Multi-ion optical clock has an obvious potential to improve clock stability. However, their operation has so far been impeded due to the challenges of controlling the various inhomogeneous shifts that are...

I will describe recent work at Oxford on quantum networking applications using trapped-ion qubits. Our apparatus consists of two independent ion traps, separated by 2 metres, linked via a single-photon optical fibre interface. We can generate high-fidelity (>90%) entanglement between trapped-ion qubits, one stored in each trap, at high speed (up to 200 entanglement events per second). Using...

I will discuss the ups and downs of buffer gas cooling of trapped ions in the ultracold regime [1-3]. I will focus on attainable temperatures, collision energies and possible issues such as spin exchange and relaxation during atom-ion collisions [4] as well as trap-assisted complexes that can arise after an atom-ion collision [5]. I will discuss the prospects of using the system to explore...

Atoms with a highly excited electron, called Rydberg atoms, can form unusual types of molecular bonds. The bond differs from the well known ionic and covalent bonds not only by its binding mechanism, but also by its bond length ranging up to several micrometres. We report the observation a new type of molecular bond based on the interaction between the ionic charge and a flipping induced...

Rydberg atoms arrays are one of the most promising platforms for quantum simulation. Alkali ground-state atoms, trapped in optical tweezers, are arranged into a well-defined arbitrary geometry before being transferred into low-angular momentum Rydberg states using laser pulses. Once in a Rydberg level, the atoms interact with each other through the dipole-dipole coupling, which enables to...

Precision measurements of fundamental properties of protons and antiprotons constitute stringent tests of the fundamental interactions. Comparisons of their charge-to-mass ratios and magnetic moments have been used to constrain potential violations of CPT invariance, asymmetric particle-antiparticle dark matter couplings, and antiproton gravitational anomalies.

The BASE collaboration has...

Strong ionizing radiation fields are ubiquitous in astrophysical environments. There, atomic matter appears mainly as highly charged ions (HCIs), which dominate radiation transport and plasma dynamics. Their spectroscopic signatures provide information on the composition, temperature, density, turbulence, and velocity of plasmas, e. g. those surrounding stars, X-ray binaries, active galactic...