Trapping Electrons in a Room-Temperature Microwave Paul Trap
Clemens Matthiesen, Qian Yu, Jinen Guo, Alberto M. Alonso, Hartmut Häffner
Abstract
We demonstrate trapping of electrons in a millimeter-sized quadrupole Paul trap driven at 1.6 GHz in a room-temperature ultrahigh vacuum setup. Cold electrons are introduced into the trap by ionization of atomic calcium via Rydberg states and stay confined by microwave and static electric fields for several tens of milliseconds. A fraction of these electrons remain trapped longer and show no measurable loss for measurement times up to a second. Electronic excitation of the motion reveals secular frequencies that can be tuned over a range of several tens to hundreds of MHz. Operating a similar electron Paul trap in a cryogenic environment may provide a platform for all-electric quantum computing with trapped electron spin qubits.