High-resolution collision energy control through ion position modulation in atom-ion hybrid systems

Prateek Puri; Michael Mills; Elizabeth P West; Christian Schneider; Eric R Hudson

doi:10.1063/1.5031145

High-resolution collision energy control through ion position modulation in atom-ion hybrid systems

Rev Sci Instrum. 2018 Aug;89(8):083112. doi: 10.1063/1.5031145.

Authors

Prateek Puri¹, Michael Mills¹, Elizabeth P West¹, Christian Schneider¹, Eric R Hudson¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

PMID: 30184618
DOI: 10.1063/1.5031145

Abstract

We demonstrate an ion shuttling technique for high-resolution control of atom-ion collision energy by translating an ion held within a radio-frequency trap through a magneto-optical atom trap. The technique is demonstrated both experimentally and through numerical simulations, with the experimental results indicating control of ion kinetic energies from 0.05 to 1 K with a fractional resolution of ∼10 and the simulations demonstrating that kinetic energy control up to 120 K with a maximum predicted resolution of ∼100 is possible, offering order-of-magnitude improvements over most alternative techniques. Finally, we perform a proof-of-principle chemistry experiment using this technique and outline how the method may be refined in the future and applied to the study of molecular ion chemistry.