Dynamical ion transfer between coupled Coulomb crystals in a double well potential

Abstract

We investigate the non-equilibrium dynamics of coupled Coulomb crystals of different sizes trapped in a double well potential. The dynamics is induced by an instantaneous quench of the potential barrier separating the two crystals. Due to the intra- and inter-crystal Coulomb interactions and the asymmetric population of the potential wells we observe a complex reordering of ions within the two crystals as well as ion transfer processes from one well to the other. The study and analysis of the latter processes constitutes the main focus of this work. In particular we examine the dependence of the observed ion transfers on the quench amplitude performing an analysis for different crystalline configurations ranging from one-dimensional ion chains via two-dimensional zig-zag chains and ring structures to three-dimensional spherical structures. Such an analysis provides us with the means to extract the general principles governing the ion transfer dynamics and we gain some insight on the structural disorder caused by the quench of the barrier height.