Trapping Ion Coulomb Crystals in an Optical Lattice

Phys Rev Lett. 2024 Mar 29;132(13):133003. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.133003.

Abstract

We report the optical trapping of multiple ions localized at individual lattice sites of a one-dimensional optical lattice. We observe a fivefold increased range of axial dc-electric field strength for which ions can be optically trapped with high probability and an increase of the axial eigenfrequency by 2 orders of magnitude compared to an optical dipole trap without interference but of similar intensity. Our findings motivate an alternative pathway to extend arrays of trapped ions in size and dimension, enabling quantum simulations with particles interacting at long range.