Surface Trap for Ytterbium Ions

Physics We conducted an experiment to load a shallow planar ion trap from a cold atom source of Ytterbium using photoionization. The surface trap consisted of a three-rod radio frequency Paul trap fabricated using standard printed circuit board techniques. The cold atom source was an isotope-selective magneto-optical trap of naturally-occurring Yb isotopes. The confining beams were provided by commercially-available ultra-violet diode lasers locked to an atomic reference using the Dichroic Atomic Vapor Laser Lock technique. We used photoionization from the Yb magneto-optical trap located within the region of the ion trapping potential