Cooling of a trapped ion in the strong-sideband regime

Abstract

A single two-level atom, with quantized center-of-mass motion, is constrained to move in a one-dimensional harmonic potential while interacting with a single-mode classical traveling-wave light field. When the classical light field is tuned to the atom's lower vibrational sideband, cooling can occur. The strong-sideband and Lamb-Dicke perturbation regimes for the system are defined. The steady-state and time-evolution behaviors in the strong-sideband regime are discussed and, in particular, it is shown that the steady-state average trap number saturates when spontaneous emission is weak and that the steady-state average trap number depends more strongly on the trap frequency in the saturated regime than previously predicted. Finally, the possibility of observing quantum jumps between trap levels is discussed.