https://doi.org/10.1140/epjqt/s40507-025-00357-y
Research
High-performance in-vacuum optical system for quantum optics experiments in a Penning-trap
1
Departamento de Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain
2
Centro de Investigación en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones, Universidad de Granada, 18071, Granada, Spain
Received:
28
May
2024
Accepted:
30
April
2025
Published online:
22
May
2025
Accurate measurements with implications in many branches of physics have been accessed using conventional techniques in Penning traps within a temperature regime where each eigenmotion of a charged particle is still a classical harmonic oscillator. Cooling the particle directly or indirectly with lasers allows reaching the quantum regime of each oscillator, controlling subtle effects in the precision frontier by detecting photons instead of electric currents. In this paper, we present a new in-vacuum optical system designed to detect 397-nm fluorescence photons from individual calcium ions and Coulomb crystals in a 7-T Penning trap. Based on the outcome of computer simulations, our design shows diffraction-limited performance. The system has been characterized using a single laser-cooled ion as a point-like source, reaching a final resolution of 3.69(3) μm and 2.75(3) μm for the trap’s axial and radial directions, respectively, after correcting aberrations.
Key words: Trapped ions / Optical systems
© The Author(s) 2025
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
