Increasing the Brightness of Cold Ion Beams by Suppressing Disorder-Induced Heating with Rydberg Blockade

Phys Rev Lett. 2015 Nov 20;115(21):214802. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.214802. Epub 2015 Nov 20.

Abstract

A model for the equilibrium coupling of an ion system with varying initial hard-sphere Rydberg blockade correlations is used to quantify the suppression of disorder-induced heating in Coulomb-expanding cold ion bunches. We show that bunches with experimentally achievable blockade parameters have an emittance reduced by a factor of 2.6 and increased focusability and brightness compared to a disordered bunch. Demonstrating suppression of disorder-induced heating is an important step in the development of techniques for the creation of beam sources with sufficient phase-space density for ultrafast, single-shot coherent diffractive imaging.