Non-equilibrium Coupling of a Quartz Resonator to Ions for Penning-Trap Fast Resonant Detection

Abstract

The coherent coupling between a quartz electro-mechanical resonator at room temperature and trapped ions in a 7-tesla Penning trap has been demonstrated for the first time. The signals arising from the coupling remain for integration times in the orders of seconds. From the measurements carried out, we demonstrate that the coupling allows detecting the reduced-cyclotron frequency (ν + ) within times below 10 ms and with an improved resolution compared to conventional electronic detection schemes. A resolving power ν + /∆ν + = 2.4 × 10 7 has been reached in single measurements. In this publication we present the first results, emphasizing the novel features of the quartz resonator as fast non-destructive ion-trap detector together with different ways to analyze the data and considering aspects like precision, resolution and sensitivity.