Abstract
We report laser cooling of a single ion held in a rf (Paul) ion trap to where it occupies the quantum-mechanical ground state of motion. With the use of resolved-sideband stimulated Raman cooling, the zero point of motion is achieved 98% of the time in 1D and 92% of the time in 3D. Cooling to the zero-point energy appears to be a crucial prerequisite for future experiments such as the realization of simple quantum logic gates applicable to quantum computation.
- Received 19 December 1994
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.75.4011
©1995 American Physical Society