An ion trap built with photonic crystal fibre technology

We demonstrate a surface-electrode ion trap fabricated using techniques transferred from the manufacture of photonic-crystal fibres. This provides a relatively straightforward route for realizing traps with an electrode structure on the 100 micron scale with high optical access. We demonstrate the basic functionality of the trap by cooling a single ion to the quantum ground state, allowing us to measure a heating rate from the ground state of 787 +/- 24 quanta/s. Variation of the fabrication procedure used here may provide access to traps in this geometry with trap scales between 100 mu m and 10 mu m. (C) 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License