Radium ion: A possible candidate for measuring atomic parity violation

Single trapped and laser cooled Radium ion as a possible candidate for measuring the parity violation induced frequency shift has been discussed here. Even though the technique to be used is similar to that proposed by Fortson [1], Radium has its own advantages and disadvantages. The most attractive part of Radium ion as compared to that of Barium ion is its mass which comes along with added complexity of instability as well as other issues which are discussed hereComment: Conference proceedin

Cavity electromagnetically induced transparency and all-optical switching using ion Coulomb crystals

The control of one light field by another, ultimately at the single photon level, is a challenging task which has numerous interesting applications within nonlinear optics and quantum information science. Due to the extremely weak direct interactions between optical photons in vacuum, this type of control can in practice only be achieved through highly nonlinear interactions within a medium. Electromagnetic induced transparency (EIT) constitutes one such means to obtain the extremely strong nonlinear coupling needed to facilitate interactions between two faint light fields. Here, we demonstrate for the first time EIT as well as all-optical EIT-based light switching using ion Coulomb crystals situated in an optical cavity. Unprecedented narrow cavity EIT feature widths down to a few kHz and a change from essentially full transmission to full absorption of the probe field within a window of only ~100 kHz are achieved. By applying a weak switching field, we furthermore demonstrate nearly perfect switching of the transmission of the probe field. These results represent important milestones for future realizations of quantum information processing devices, such as high-efficiency quantum memories, single-photon transistors and single-photon gates

Engineering of microfabricated ion traps and integration of advanced on-chip features

Atomic ions trapped in electromagnetic potentials have long been used for fundamental studies in quantum physics. Over the past two decades, trapped ions have been successfully used to implement technologies such as quantum computing, quantum simulation, atomic clocks, mass spectrometers and quantum sensors. Advanced fabrication techniques, taken from other established or emerging disciplines, are used to create new, reliable ion-trap devices aimed at large-scale integration and compatibility with commercial fabrication. This Technical Review covers the fundamentals of ion trapping before discussing the design of ion traps for the aforementioned applications. We overview the current microfabrication techniques and the various considerations behind the choice of materials and processes. Finally, we discuss current efforts to include advanced, on-chip features in next-generation ion traps

Cavity QED: strength in numbers

Strong coupling of light and matter is the most important, yet challenging goal in the field of cavity quantum electrodynamics. This regime has now been reached by collectively exciting large crystals of trapped ions