On December 25, 2012, Dr. Wan Yong from PTB, invited by Prof. Huang Xueren, visited Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics (WIPM, CAS), and gave a wonderful talk to researchers of the institute. The title was “Few-photon spectroscopy of a trapped ion through sensitive photon recoil detection”.
The traditional method obtaining ion’s spectroscopy is to interrogate the cold ion directly. While, with the development of the quantum manipulation technique, a new technique called Quantum Logic Spectroscopy was emerged to realize the detection. The principle is that a spectroscopy ion is trapped simultaneously with a single logic ion, which is used for laser cooling and detection of the spectroscopy signal. Then detection is achieved by applying a mapping operation to each ion, which results in a coherent transfer of the spectroscopy ion’s internal state onto the logic ion. Al+ optical clock, the most precise clock currently, is based on this technique. Using this technique, Dr. Wan and his colleagues have obtained the spectrum of Ca+ S1/2-P1/2 transition. This spectroscopy technique can realize the detection with higher efficiency and precision, compared with the traditional method
After the talk, Dr. Wan Yong discussed with researchers and students about the technique.
