Simulation of sympathetic cooling efficiency in a linear Paul trap driven by alternative waveforms

Abstract

Cooling of ions or other charged particles in electromagnetic traps is an essential tool to achieve control over their degrees of freedom on the quantum level. For many objects, there is no viable route for direct cooling, such as an accessible laser cooling transition. In such a case, the sympathetic cooling can be used, where a particle with such a direct route is used to cool down the other particle via Coulomb interaction. On the downside, this cooling process often is inefficient. Here, we numerically evaluate the sympathetic cooling performance in a quadrupole ion trap for different driving waveforms. We find that using different driving waveforms and optimized trap parameters the sympathetic cooling performance can be enhanced. These results will open up the way to achieve larger sympathetic cooling rates from which many techniques, such as aluminum ion clocks, might profit.