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Updated: Mar 22, 2026

Cooling an Optically Trapped Ultracold Fermi Gas by Periodical Driving
Published on: March 30, 2017
Resolved-Sideband Laser Cooling in a Penning Trap
J F Goodwin1, G Stutter1, R C Thompson1
1Quantum Optics and Laser Science, Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom.
Abstract:
We report the laser cooling of a single ^{40}Ca^{+} ion in a Penning trap to the motional ground state in one dimension. Cooling is performed in the strong binding limit on the 729-nm electric quadrupole S_{1/2}↔D_{5/2} transition, broadened by a quench laser coupling the D_{5/2} and P_{3/2} levels. We find the final ground-state occupation to be 98(1)%. We measure the heating rate of the trap to be very low with n[over ¯][over ˙]≈0.3(2) s^{-1} for trap frequencies from 150-400 kHz, consistent with the large ion-electrode distance.

