M. Wiesel

We have performed a detailed experimental study of resistive cooling of large ensembles of highly charged ions such as Ar$^{13+}$ in a cryogenic Penning trap. Different from the measurements reported in [M. Vogel et al., Phys. Rev. A, 043412 (2014)], we observe purely exponential cooling behavior when conditions are chosen to allow collisional thermalization of the ions. We provide evidence that in this situation, resistive cooling time constants and final temperatures are independent of the initial ion energy, and that the cooling time constant of a thermalized ion ensemble is identical to the single-ion cooling time constant. For sufficiently high ion number densities, our measurements show discontinuities in the spectra of motional resonances which indicate a transition of the ion ensemble to a fluid-like state when cooled to temperatures below approximately 14 K. With the final ion temperature presently being 7.5 K, ions of the highest charge states are expected to form ion crystals by mere resistive cooling, in particular not requiring the use of laser cooling.

We present an experimental concept and setup for laser-microwave double-resonance spectroscopy of highly charged ions in a Penning trap. Such spectroscopy allows a highly precise measurement of the Zeeman splittings of fine- and hyperfine-structure levels due the magnetic field of the trap. We have performed detailed calculations of the Zeeman effect in the framework of quantum electrodynamics of bound states as present in such highly charged ions. We find that apart from the linear Zeeman effect, second- and third-order Zeeman effects also contribute to the splittings on a level of 10^-4 and 10^-8, respectively, and hence are accessible to a determination within the achievable spectroscopic resolution of the ARTEMIS experiment currently in preparation.