Increasing the Brightness of Cold Ion Beams by Suppressing Disorder-Induced Heating with Rydberg Blockade

A model for the equilibrium coupling of an ion system with varying initial hard-sphere Rydberg blockade correlations is used to quantify the suppression of disorder-induced heating in Coulomb-expanding cold ion bunches. We show that bunches with experimentally achievable blockade parameters have an emittance reduced by a factor of 2.6 and increased focusability and brightness compared to a disordered bunch. Demonstrating suppression of disorder-induced heating is an important step in the development of techniques for the creation of beam sources with sufficient phase-space density for ultrafast, single-shot coherent diffractive imaging.