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Adiabaticity in surface electrode traps

John Bollinger, National Institute of Standards and Technology

(Session : Thursday from )

Abstract. John Bollinger, Jason Amini, and Joe Britton NIST ion storage group, Boulder CO 80305 Radio frequency (RF) Paul trap arrays where all the RF and static control electrodes lie in a single plane are being developed for scaling ion trap quantum information processing to larger numbers of ions [1]. In such surface electrode traps, ions are confined a small distance above the electrode surface. The RF ponderomotive potential is anharmonic, rising steeply for ion excursions towards the electrode surface but much more gradually for excursions away from the surface. Recent work with multipole RF traps have shown a significant reduction in the effective trapping depth from the calculated psuedo-potential well depth due to non-adiabatic ion motion in the anharmonic potential [2]. We investigate whether anharmonic contributions to surface electrode trap potentials could reduce the effective well depth of surface electrode traps. Analytic expressions [1] for the potential of 4 and 5 wire surface electrode traps indicate that the effective well depth could be reduced for trap parameters q > 0.2. 1. Microfabricated Chip Traps for Ions, J. M. Amini, J. Britton, D. Leibfried, and D.J. Wineland. Chapter in the upcoming book "Atom chips" edited by J. Reichel and V. Vuletic (to be published by WILEY-VCH); J.H. Wesenberg, Phys. Rev. A 78, 063410 (2008). 2. J. Mikosh et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 223001 (2007).