Abstract:

A laser cooling scheme for trapped ions is presented which is based on the fast dynamical Stark shift gate, described in (Jonathan et al 2000 Phys. Rev. A 62 042307). Since this cooling method does not contain an off resonant carrier transition, low final temperatures are achieved even in a traveling wave light field. The proposed method may operate in either pulsed or continuous mode and is also suitable for ion traps using microwave addressing in strong magnetic field gradients.