2025/09/18 by Chowdhury, Saajid, Ríos, Jesús Pérez
#Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #Chaotic Dynamics (nlin.CD) #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.15117
We study the classical dynamics of a Paul-trapped ion in a low-density bath of atoms above 1 μ\textrmK. We find that lower energy collisions with more massive atoms, especially at energies less than the initial micromotion heating, are more likely to form atom-ion complexes. These complexes evolve in a fractal structure for every scattering observable, showing non-hyperbolic chaotic dynamics. To explore the chaotic dynamics, we use a GPU-accelerated methodology allowing us to run over 3× 108 trajectories of a 174Yb+ and different atoms. As a result, after analyzing the dynamics as a function of the atom species, collision energy, trap parameters, and ion-atom potential depth, we find a link between heating and the onset of chaos in the first atom-ion interaction that occurs when a low-density atomic bath is merged with a trapped ion.