European Conference on Trapped Ions (ECTI)

Highly charged ions (HCI) have long been proposed for the application in optical clocks due to their extreme atomic properties. This allows for tests of fundamental physics and promises a systematic uncertainty that can compete with the state-of-the-art [1]. However, their application as frequency references has long been impeded by the megakelvin temperatures at which HCI are typically...

The 171Yb+ ion features two narrow optical transitions: an electric octupole (E3) transition as well as an electric quadrupole (E2) transition. Because they have a large differential sensitivity to the fine structure constant α, its possible variations can be probed by comparing the transition frequencies at various positions in spacetime. We find improved bounds on a linear temporal drift of...

The different effective dipole moment of conformational isomers allows for their spatial separation by means of electrostatic deflection, enabling their individual reactivity to be investigated [1]. Recently, the conformer-specific polar cycloaddition of dibromobutadiene (DBB) with trapped propene ions has shown that both gauche and s-trans DBB conformers display capture-limited reaction...

Optical clocks based on highly charged ions (HCIs) offer several promising avenues for the study of physics beyond the standard model. Among these are searches for time variation of the fine structure constant, $\dot{\alpha }/\alpha$, ultralight scalar dark matter, and tests of quantum electrodynamics (QED) [1]. Due to level crossings occurring in high charge states, narrow linewidth...

Motional modes of ions trapped in the same potential are often used to transfer information between ions, for example in quantum logic spectroscopy or Molmer-Sorensen gates. Good motional control is crucial for high-fidelity operations; as many modes as possible should be cooled to near the ground state. Unfortunately, in some crystals, due to geometrical constraints on the apparatus or low...

Quantum technologies employing trapped ion qubits commonly rely on the motional state of the ion. Motional states can not only be used for entanglement operations but also for example to store quantum information or can act as a tool for logic spectroscopy. Hence, a precise knowledge about the motional state of the ion is often required.
In this work we present two novel methods to measure...

Trapped ion crystals consisting of many individual photon emitters offer an ideal platform for the exploration of a wide range of fundamental quantum emission scenarios. We present the implementation of a new optical emission regime in which photons scattered incoherently from different ions collectively contribute to the observation of photon bunching and super-Poissonian photon number...