Abstract

The ability to laser cool ions to within the vicinity of the motional ground state is a key factor in the realization of efficient quantum computation. Various cooling schemes have been suggested and implemented, achieving lower and lower temperature and increased cooling rates. The two-level and Raman sideband cooling schemes employ Rabi frequencies that are typically an order of magnitude lower than the trap frequency. This is necessary to avoid off-resonant excitations which increase the average phonons number 〈n〉 and thus lead to heating. Hence, these off-resonant excitations increase the final temperature of the scheme. In this work we present a solution to this problem that relies on the fast Stark shift gate. In this scheme off-resonant carrier transitions that would lead to heating are forbidden thus achieving lower final temperature and a much higher cooling rate.

© 2007 IEEE