Electromagnetically-induced-transparency (EIT) cooling is a ground-state
cooling technique for trapped particles. EIT offers a broader cooling range in
frequency space compared to more established methods. In this work, we
experimentally investigate EIT cooling in strings of trapped atomic ions. In
strings of up to 18 ions, we demonstrate simultaneous ground state cooling of
all radial modes in under 1 ms. This is a particularly important capability in
view of emerging quantum simulation experiments with large numbers of trapped
ions. Our analysis of the EIT cooling dynamics is based on a novel technique
enabling single-shot measurements of phonon numbers, by rapid adiabatic passage
on a vibrational sideband of a narrow transition
