
Background-free detection of trapped ions
We demonstrate a Doppler cooling and detection scheme for ions with low-lying D levels which almost entirely suppresses scattered laser light background, while retaining a high fluorescence signal and efficient cooling. We cool a single ion with a laser on the 2S1/2 ?2P1/2 transition as usual, but repump via the 2P3/2 level. By filtering out light on the cooling transition and detecting only the fluorescence from the 2P3/2 → 2S1/2 decays, we suppress the scattered laser light background count rate to 1 s-1 while maintaining a signal of 29000 s-1 with moderate saturation of the cooling transition. This scheme will be particularly useful for experiments where ions are trapped in close proximity to surfaces, such as the trap electrodes in microfabricated ion traps, which leads to high background scatter from the cooling beam.
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Related Subject Headings
- Optoelectronics & Photonics
- 5102 Atomic, molecular and optical physics
- 4017 Mechanical engineering
- 0913 Mechanical Engineering
- 0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- 0205 Optical Physics
Citation

Published In
DOI
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Optoelectronics & Photonics
- 5102 Atomic, molecular and optical physics
- 4017 Mechanical engineering
- 0913 Mechanical Engineering
- 0906 Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- 0205 Optical Physics