Abstract
Several groups have recently used laser cooling to produce ordered arrays of ions (ion crystals) in rf quadrupole traps. We discuss two physical mechanisms which underlie and explain the behavior of ion crystals. First, we show that deterministic chaos can be responsible for phase transitions between the ordered (crystal) state and the disordered (cloud) state.1 The crystal—cloud transition is explained as an order—chaos transition. Chaos arises from the nonlinear interaction of Coulomb repulsion with the oscillating trap potential.
© 1989 Optical Society of America
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