T. Pfeifer

We present a novel ultrastable superconducting radio-frequency (RF) ion trap realized as a combination of an RF cavity and a linear Paul trap. Its RF quadrupole mode at 34.52 MHz reaches a quality factor of $Q\approx2.3\times 10^5$ at a temperature of 4.1 K and is used to radially confine ions in an ultralow-noise pseudopotential. This concept is expected to strongly suppress motional heating rates and related frequency shifts which limit the ultimate accuracy achieved in advanced ion traps for frequency metrology. Running with its low-vibration cryogenic cooling system, electron beam ion trap and deceleration beamline supplying highly charged ions (HCI), the superconducting trap offers ideal conditions for optical frequency metrology with ionic species. We report its proof-of-principle operation as a quadrupole mass filter with HCI, and trapping of Doppler-cooled ${}^9\text{Be}^+$ Coulomb crystals.

Electron beam ion traps (EBIT) are ideal tools for both production and study of highly charged ions (HCI). In order to reduce their construction, maintenance, and operation costs we have developed a novel, compact, room-temperature design, the Heidelberg Compact EBIT (HC-EBIT). Four already commissioned devices operate at the strongest fields (up to 0.86 T) reported for such EBITs using permanent magnets, run electron beam currents up to 80 mA and energies up to 10 keV. They demonstrate HCI production, trapping, and extraction of pulsed Ar$^{16+}$ bunches and continuous 100 pA ion beams of highly charged Xe up to charge state 29+, already with a 4 mA, 2 keV electron beam. Moreover, HC-EBITs offer large solid-angle ports and thus high photon count rates, e. g., in x-ray spectroscopy of dielectronic recombination in HCIs up to Fe$^{24+}$, achieving an electron-energy resolving power of $E/ΔE > 1500$ at 5 keV. Besides traditional on-axis electron guns, we have also implemented a novel off-axis gun for laser, synchrotron, and free-electron laser applications, offering clear optical access along the trap axis. We report on its first operation at a synchrotron radiation facility demonstrating resonant photoexcitation of highly charged oxygen.

Recent theoretical works have proposed atomic clocks based on narrow optical transitions in highly charged ions. The most interesting candidates for searches of new physics are those which occur at rare orbital crossings where the shell structure of the periodic table is reordered. There are only three such crossings expected to be accessible in highly charged ions, and hitherto none have been observed as both experiment and theory have proven difficult. In this work we observe an orbital crossing in highly charged ions for the first time, in a system chosen to be tractable from both sides: Pr$^{9+}$. We present electron beam ion trap measurements of its spectra, including the inter-configuration lines that reveal the sought-after crossing. The proposed nHz-wide clock line, found to be at 452.334(1) nm, proceeds through hyperfine admixture of its upper state with an E2-decaying level. With state-of-the-art calculations we show that it has a very high sensitivity to new physics and extremely low sensitivity to external perturbations, making it a unique candidate for proposed precision studies.

In-vacuo cryogenic environments are ideal for applications requiring both low temperatures and extremely low particle densities. This enables reaching long storage and coherence times for example in ion traps, essential requirements for experiments with highly charged ions, quantum computation, and optical clocks. We have developed a novel cryostat continuously refrigerated with a pulse-tube cryocooler and providing the lowest vibration level reported for such a closed-cycle system with 1 W cooling power for a <5 K experiment. A decoupling system suppresses vibrations from the cryocooler by three orders of magnitude down to a level of 10 nm peak amplitudes in the horizontal plane. Heat loads of about 40 W (at 45 K) and 1 W (at 4 K) are transferred from an experimental chamber, mounted on an optical table, to the cryocooler through a vacuum-insulated massive 120 kg inertial copper pendulum. The 1.4 m long pendulum allows installation of the cryocooler in a separate, acoustically isolated machine room. In the laser laboratory, we measured the residual vibrations using an interferometric setup. The positioning of the 4 K elements is reproduced to better than a few micrometer after a full thermal cycle to room temperature. Extreme high vacuum on the $10^{-15}$ mbar level is achieved. In collaboration with the Max-Planck-Intitut für Kernphysik (MPIK), such a setup is now in operation at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) for a next-generation optical clock experiment using highly charged ions.