Cornell Researchers Demonstrate Standing-Wave EIT Cooling for Trapped Ions

Insider Brief

• Cornell University researchers used Nullspace ES to simulate electrostatic fields for a chip-scale ion trap used in the first experimental demonstration of standing-wave EIT cooling for trapped ions.
• The simulations generated baseline voltage sets for axial confinement, radial mode rotation and sub-micron ion positioning during the experiment.
• The demonstrated cooling approach achieved higher cooling rates, covered a broader range of motional modes and reached lower final phonon occupation numbers than the conventional running-wave approach.

PRESS RELEASE — Nullspace, a leading provider of advanced electromagnetic simulation software, today announced that researchers at Cornell University, led by Professor Karan Mehta, used Nullspace ES to support the first experimental demonstration of standing-wave electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) cooling for trapped ions, building on theoretical predictions dating back to 1992.

Using Nullspace ES to simulate the electrostatic fields of a complex chip-scale ion trap, researchers in Cornell University’s Mehta Group calculated the baseline voltage sets used to control ions throughout the experiment. The resulting experiment demonstrated a new approach to trapped-ion cooling that achieved higher cooling rates, addressed a broader range of modes, and reached lower final phonon occupation numbers than the conventional running-wave approach.