Zaris, J.
, Johnson, W.
, Shankar, A.
, Bollinger, J.
and Parker, S.
(2025),
Numerical Simulations of 3D Ion Crystal Dynamics in a Penning Trap using the Fast Multipole Method, Journal of Plasma Physics
(Accessed April 26, 2025)
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Numerical Simulations of 3D Ion Crystal Dynamics in a Penning Trap using the Fast Multipole Method
Published
Author(s)
John Zaris, Wes Johnson, Athreya Shankar, , Scott E. Parker
Abstract
We simulate the dynamics, including laser cooling, of 3D ion crystals confined in a Penning trap using a newly developed molecular dynamics-like code. The numerical integration of the ions' equations of motion is accelerated using the fast multipole method to calculate the Coulomb interaction between ions, which allows us to efficiently study large ion crystals with thousands of ions. In particular, we show that the simulation time scales directly with ion number, rather than with the square of the ion number. By treating the ions' absorption of photons as a Poisson process, we simulate individual photon scattering events to study laser cooling of 3D ellipsoid ion crystals. Initial simulations suggest that these crystals can be efficiently cooled to temperatures of several millikelvin within several milliseconds, owing to the mixing of the easily cooled axial motional modes with the planar motional modes. This suggests that 3D ion crystals could be well-suited as platforms for future quantum information experiments.Citation
Journal of Plasma Physics
Pub Type
Journals
Keywords
3D ion crystals, fast multipole method simulations, laser cooling simulations, Penning trap
Citation
Issues
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Created February 11, 2025