2025/03/16 by Barnea, Orr, Einav, Dror, Drotleff, Jonas +2 · 1 citation
#Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.12417
Stray electric fields induce excess micromotion in ion traps, limiting experimental performance. We present a new micromotion-compensation technique that utilizes a dark ion in a bright-dark-bright linear ion crystal. Stray electric fields in the radial plane of the trap deform the crystal axially. We exploit the mode softening near the transition to the zig-zag configuration to increase our sensitivity dramatically. We corroborate our results with a modified ion-displacement compensation method using a single bright ion. Our modification allows us to compensate stray fields on the 2D radial plane from a 1D measurement of the ion position on the camera. Both methods require only a fixed imaging camera and continuous ion-fluorescence detection. As such, they can be readily implemented in virtually any ion-trapping experiment without additional hardware modifications.