We investigate theoretically the possibility for robust and fast cooling of a trapped atomic ion by transient interaction with a pre-cooled ion. The transient coupling is achieved through dynamical control of the ions’ equilibrium positions. To achieve short cooling times we make use of shortcuts to adiabaticity by applying invariant-based engineering. We design these to take account of imperfections such as stray fields, and trap frequency offsets. For settings appropriate to a currently operational trap in our laboratory, we find that robust performance could be achieved down to 6.3 motional cycles, comprising 14.2 μs for ions with a 0.44 MHz trap frequency. This is considerably faster than can be achieved using laser cooling in the weak coupling regime, which makes this an attractive scheme in the context of quantum computing.

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