Micromotion Compensation and Photoionization of Ions in a Linear Trap

The stable confinement of ions in an electromagnetic trap is a prerequisite of sideband cooling and quantum information processing. For a string of ions in a linear ion trap, we report our recent efforts of compensating for micromotion of the ions by three methods, which yields narrower fluorescence spectra and lower temperature. We also achieve a photoionization scheme that loads the ions deterministically into the linear trap from an atomic beam.